Star Wars: The Old Republic: 36 Hours
by MiekKenr
Summary: Tomi signed up with the Balmorran Resistance to drive the Empire from his home, but he never imagined what faced him in the trenches around Verdin Palace. Set during the last hours of Balmorra's freedom before the Treaty of Coruscant, follow five friends as they struggle to survive in some of the worst conditions of the war.


**Thirty-Six Hours**

By

Michael Lee

**Dedication**

This story is dedicated to those touched by war.

**Thanks and Acknowledgements**

I would like to thank for hosting this little project of mine. I would sincerely like to thank my readers as well, this is for you.

In parting, I would like to acknowledge the following:

My great-grandfather Elmer Kern, who went over the top in 1918.

My great-uncle Russel Berdell, who went to rescue a world with Patton's armored division in 1944.

My grandfather Alfred Beck, who saw fit to serve beneath the waves in 1945.

My uncle George Beck, who served the Air Force in the waning days of Vietnam.

My buddies Chris and Ryan, for coming home from the Middle East.

Anyone, anywhere serving in our armed forces and for anyone who keeps the flame lit.

**1. The Arrival**

The Republic is leaving Balmorra. I watch the transport clear Verdin Palace just as we settle to a stop. The walker is an old one and it had limped more than walked us from the training camp. Vanmere is pointing but its Shiod who says it.

"They're abandoning us!"

It seems that way. For months the Republic has been pulling troops off Balmorra. Verdin Palace and the principality surrounding it seems to be all that's left of my home planet. The Sith have been here for years, fighting and burning. If I had been eighteen just a few months earlier, I might have had my first deployment in the trenches around Sentir, my home. Instead, we're here.

"Maybe its just a supply run," I say and step off the deck onto the hard earth. My boots are old and my uniform hangs baggy on my small frame. The uniform of the Balmorran army hangs limply on us all, even portly Vanmere. If not for the draft, he'd have never made a soldier. He fell behind on every march, but it didn't matter to our drill instructors. "You won't need marching in the trenches," he said and made us all do it again anyway.

"Let's go find Kat," Lenmerer says as he hefts his big bag. Len is the smallest of us all, little more than a boy in his father's uniform. His pack is as big as he is, his blaster rifle just as tall. He comes to stand next to Vanmere and me. Shiod lags behind, staring into the sky. Then he shrugs and comes too. The four of us leave the transport behind.

"He's still alive," Len says as we walk over uneven ground. It's been blasted in craters and pock marks. No grass grows here, not even thistlebrush which thrives in the cold. Life is gone from here. I look around and see corpses of brownleaf and gray needle trees blackened and scorched where they fell. Some are no more than stumps, the rest burned to ash. I don't look at Len, only the trees.

"Of course. He wrote just last week."

"Five months in this dump," Shiod says, groaning under the weight of his pack. He reminds me of an old story, of a turtle carrying its house on its back. Will he be able to hide inside that pack when this war seeks him like it sought those trees? I feel the enthusiasm I'd had on the way over burn away.

"Five months is not so long," I say and we talk no more. A year ago we had been five students on the cusp of manhood. Then the Sith came and many were drafted. Kat had been taken two months later. I'd waved goodbye to him at the transport lift. "Goodbye Kat!" I yelled. "Get one of them for me!"

Now it would be our turn. We would have to get one for ourselves. I am determined to do myself proud here. My parents proud. It's been so long since I've seen them. They were in occupied territory now, far from here. A year is a long time at seventeen.

We reach Verdin Palace and its huge walls. A shield hums before it, blue and translucent like an iridescent bubble. When reach out to touch it, its solid and hot, like glass left in the sun.

A guard comes to us from a sentry hut. "You the new recruits?" he says. I tell him yes. He indicates for us to give him our identification. We each produce a coded chip. He scans them each and points to one side of the sentry hut. "Go that way, follow it around to the communication trench. You'll report to Sergeant Fane."

We follow his directions into another world. Glow lamps illuminate a scarred sight. Just past the sentry hut, we see the defensive trenches. They are deep incisions into the earth, crevices and cracks two meters deep. A soldier in a dirty, mud-caked uniform shows us how to get down into the nearest one. "Just jump," he says and laughs.

We leap down onto a plasteel box and stumble off into ankle-deep mud and freezing water. Shiod falls and it takes both Len and me to pick him up again. Muddy and soaked, he curses the soldier, who only laughs. We go on, wading as best we can with cold, wet feet and darkening spirits.

Men lay everywhere. They lay on shelves cut into the trench, or small holes they cut into the side. They are all caked in mud. Some do not look like they are breathing. Vanmere gasps at this. "Dead men," he all but squeaks. "There are dead men in here."

"Only sleeping," Shiod says but gives me a look. Vanmere is not a brave boy, we know that. We will tell him they are sleeping until he believes it. Len checks his medical bag, fumbling around inside. I stop him and shake my head.

We find Sergeant Fane several hundred meters down the line. He wears white armor, though the white is hard to find through all the dirt. He wears no helmet and we stumble on him while he smokes a thin tabac stick. We've learned to recognize rank colors and stripes by now.

"Is this it?" he says. "How old are you lot? Nevermind, I don't care. Which one of you is Lenmerer?"

"I am, Sergeant," Len says.

"I hope you know how to use that medic bag. We need a medic on the line. Last one got his head baked by a flame spitter."

I shoot a look at Shiod before looking to Len. He's turned white, a ghost against the dark mud of the trench walls. He tries to say something but can't seem to get it out. Fane smirks. "Greenhorns. It's all right, you'll figure it out quick enough." He looks at a datapad. "Which of you is Adken?"

"I am, Sergeant," I say, curious why my name is of note.

"They say you're a good shot, ever handled a sniper rifle?"

"Yes, Sergeant," I say. I'd fired it once at basic. I suppose that counts. It seems to. He nods and taps his pad and says nothing more on it.

"Get on down the line. I'm putting you in Company B. They'll be heading up to the front soon."

We move on, not wanting to stand there much longer. Water is soaking through my boots at the seams and the further we walk, the darker the trenches become. Before long we can only step forward, unable to see a meter in front of us. We hold a hand out against a well and another out before us. Once we trip over something stiff and fleshy and we move on quickly.

The darkness is everywhere. I feel it distinctly as we slosh ahead. We say nothing to one another. Above us, there are no stars. Perhaps there are clouds, but perhaps there are not. In this desolate place between lights, I find myself alone even though Shiod is there on my right. I try not to think about home, about how this might have all been a horrible mistake.

We come into the light, sickly and yellow like before. There are men sitting in the light, looking sallow and dead despite the breath that mists between unmoving lips. One of them holds a helmet on his knees, sitting perfectly still. He is the only one to look at us and I wonder if we look like children caught where we aren't supposed to be.

"You it?" he says without emotion. No, I decide then, it is not without emotion. It's more that the emotion is gone, blown away. The void of humanity, of fear or hope, scares me more than the darkness. He offers us a smile, but it is as dead as his voice.

"Yes," I say. Shiod normally speaks for us but he is quiet now. I feel his spirit suppress at the sight of these men. They are dead men who have yet to lay in the mud and act the part. How can they be so far gone? What must be ahead of us that soldiers die before their bodies do?

The man with the helmet nods once and then ducks into a dugout we did not see before. It is a black hole in the earth, a cave through which our naked eyes can see nothing. It is an uncomfortable feeling and I look away, ashamed but I don't know why. In school, our teachers quoted a Balmorran poet who said, 'O'look ye on the end of time and despair, on the precipice and quail. Come ye faithful and close thy eyes to look upon darkness and emptiness and nothing.' I feel suddenly that this is very profound, that perhaps all eighteen years of my life were not a waste. But the feeling is fleeting and the man returns, dispelling the magnitude of the sensation.

"Take these," he says and hands us each a bag with a mask within. "For the gas," he continues when I look at him with confusion. "And this." With that he hands us each a slugthrower, a pistol that explodes a small cartridge within and fires a pellet of metal rather than a bolt of light. It is an old weapon, outdated even when my ancestors came to this world.

"What is this for?" Shiod asks and Len slaps him on the arm. "Well? What for? We have blasters don't we?"

"It's for the Sith," the man says. "Lightsabers."

I have never seen a lightsaber, those great glowing weapons of power and light, so full of strength that as boys we both dream of them, and fear them. On Balmorra where the war has been so close, as close as my mother or sister, those weapons glow red most often and it is terror that seizes us now. I see it in the eyes of my friends. I feel it in the grip Shiod has on my coat sleeve and the quiver in Vanmere's exhaling breath. Len says nothing, does nothing. I think he doesn't understand. It is plain. Our bolts will not kill a man with one of those blades. It will be stopped and returned to us. Death by our own hands. I nod and the man seems to take this for a group answer.

"Sit," he says and does so himself. He stares straight ahead at the mud wall opposite him and holds his helmet on his knees. "It'll be our turn soon."

We sit, all four of us on a ledge of mud and broken rock. Vanmere rubs at his chubby cheeks and gets streaks of mud all over them. Len is searching his medical bag but doesn't find whatever it is. I don't think he ever will as I don't think it exists here at the front.

"Where's Kat?" Shiod asks me in a whisper. I shake my head. How could I know where Kat is? I know I should ask the man with the helmet but my voice sticks in my throat. I suddenly don't want to ask, don't want to know in case he is dead. But that is ridiculous. Kat isn't dead. It is impossible. In school he never lost in sports and never failed a test. He never seemed to try. Kat just did things and came out okay. He would survive this too. It would be a snap for him. He will come up to us soon, grinning and ask us for a tabac stick or bit of gum.

There is a whistle now, shrill and short like a bird's death rattle. The men around us stand and so we stand as well. We look confusedly at one another but pile in behind the man with the helmet. He turns his head to look at me just before pulling on his helmet. "It's time," he says.

I am about to ask what he means but there is a loud crack that splits the sky with blue and white. The sound is like the world cracking open. I cover my ears but drop them again so I can pick up Shiod who has fallen to his knees. There is another crack, this time longer and louder. Again and again and again!

Then it is over. I am huddled against the trench wall with mud and rock bits in my hair and on my shoulders, gripping my rifle like a child grips his mother's arm. Shame takes me then, to look so cowardly. Shiod lays in a fetal curl at my left side. Len has pressed his face so far against the dirt wall that I can not make out his features. Vanmere is throwing up and shaking.

"Up," the man with the helmet says with a hand on my shoulder that is not unkind. His voice is impossibly soft for the situation. "That was just an attack on the Palace shield. It can't go through, but they like to knock anyway."

We head to the front. It is slow at first, picking our way through the darkness of a communications trench that is narrow and shallow so we must duck to keep out of sight. Our hands are on the man ahead of us. I have old of the man in the helmet's belt, and I feel its metal canisters cool against my skin. The night is also cold and it has begun to rain. My hair is damp by the time we turn away from the communications trench and slide down into a medic center.

Here Len is taken by the arm and pulled away from us. So quick is he gone that for an instant I'm afraid. He had been at my back, his hand gripping the back of my coat. Then the pressure of his presence is gone and when I finally see him, he is being taken into a dugout by a man with a red marking on his uniform. It is only then that I understand. He will not join us in the trenches. Medics have their own place and I am briefly jealous and mournful.

There is no time to say goodbye, to wave or any other such thing. We are moving and now it is Vanmere at my back. His thick fingers have hold of my rifle strap and if he lags behind the straps dig into my throat and nearly suffocate me.

At last we come to it. There is a valley between two high walls where men are changed out like bad fuel chargers. We are going in and there are men coming out. They do not look happy or elated. They simply look worn out and drained, men that had been used too roughly. Most are likely my own age but something has made old men out of them. Something I would soon see.

We step through and my boots sink to the ankle in muddy water. It is cold as it seeps into my boot and I hesitate, but the press of bodies behind me pushes me on. Soon both of my feet are wet and cold. I wonder if they will ever be dry again.

The trench is higher than the others, four meters in some places with a ledge higher up to stand on. I see men on them now, crouching with their rifles. Some are smoking with covered tobac sticks, just a brief flare that you will miss if you blink. There are no other lights and we slosh through along the line.

I step on something that squashes meatily beneath my boot. I recoil and stumble before the man with the helmet can catch me. He kicks at something and curses softly before hauling me to my feet. "Mud frogs," he says. "Poisonous if you let them bite. Just kick them if you see them." I nod and we move along again.

"Here," he says in a whisper and indicates an open spot on the line. We climb up onto the step and Shiod huddles in on my left and Vanmere on my right. Their warmth is welcome as the cold rain picks up. The trench wall is muddy and soft and I dig my fingers into it on impulse. Beneath, the ground is warm and inviting, accepting me if I should climb into it.

"Where is Kat?" Shiod whispers to me, glancing around. "He said he'd find us."

I shake my head. I don't know and wouldn't know where to start looking. The trench line is so dark I can't see beyond the man to Shiod's left or the trench wall before me. The rain comes down worse than ever, pouring into my hair and down the back of my neck. I wish for a helmet but the supply had run out before our training was done. I fish into my pack and draw out a dry shirt and wrap it around my head. It helps.

In the dark we wait but I don't know what for. There is a stillness about us so absolute that I feel ashamed to breath and disturb it. Down the line, someone coughs, another sniffs. There is the sound of a weapon being loaded again and again. Beyond these sounds there is only the silence and the darkness.

Suddenly a burst of light overhead. It fills the sky with white, burning an afterimage into my eyes that lasts several long moments. Pain explodes in my eyes, tears briefly obscuring the sights around me. Once cleared, there are dark shapes where the flare went off but I see Shiod very clearly. He is watching the sky too with a sense of awe. The dirt and mud are very clear to me and I see small insects burrowing and crawling along.

Another burst lights up the sky. Another and then another. I wonder what it means, wonder who fired it and why. The men around us are ducking or digging into the earth in front of them. Shiod and Vanmere look to me. I have no answers for them, our training said nothing of these star shells. And then, quite suddenly, there is a sound.

It begins with a low thump, like the heartbeat of giant creature. It reverbs throughout the area. You feel it in the earth, in your breast. Then there is the smell of burned ozone and the whizzing sound that reminds you of a swarm of buzz bees. Then, worst of all, it hits.

The barrage began.

**2. Bombardment**

Darkness. We are swallowed by it, enveloped and embraced by it. In the flashes of light we are seen as if through still images. We look at one another with white faces and thin lips pressed tight.

There is no sound in the darkness and with the light we are made deaf by explosions. Are we in one of the Hells preached to us by our Spiritual Leaders? No, it is too cold. Are we dead? No, we yet move and take breath. But in these flashes of life, there is a complete absence of life. No movement, no warmth and no sound but the crashing of ordinance. The barrage is the only life we know.

It has gone on now for an hour. I am convinced that there was no life before it and any moment, there will be no life after. The wet and mud and cold are the whole of my existence. I extend no further than the falling of the next shell.

Suddenly I am blinded, an explosion has gone off just behind us. Vanmere is gone, ripped from my hands. I cry out but I hear nothing. Do I have a voice? Will I ever speak again? Shiod rises to his feet and points but I see only spots of black and white, now fading to amber and gold and silver.

He's been blown out of the trench. Once my vision clears I spot him laying atop a mound of earth. We call out to him, dig our feet into the mud and try to raise ourselves up to grab him. There is no sign of life at first for Vanmere does not move. Then, very slowly, his arm swings over and he crawls to the ledge. We pull him down to us and I find myself holding him like I might a frightened child.

The bombardment continues on, heedless of us. When will it end? It must end, it must! There is no reason for this continue, to smash against us without reason or direction. Verdin's shields are too strong, the bombardment can not penetrate it, so why do they insist? It goes on and on.

Further down the line a shell lands directly in the trench. The explosion is muffled but where it hits there is nothing but a crater of destroyed duracrete, mud and scraps of flesh. I reach into the earth before me and press closer. I will myself into it, beg and pray for the earth itself to accept me. It is my mother, my lover, my world. If I can only be closer to her I will live for one more moment.

A hand grips my shoulder and shakes me. I shrug it off. No, no! I must be close to the wall. The wall and the earth. The earth, the earth... she will save me! In a mad moment I confuse it for my mother, a woman who is the only one allowed to say I may die. She has more hold on me than anything else in this world. The shells and concussion bombs must go through her.

Someone slaps me and shakes me hard. I look into the face of a young man with angular features and bright blue eyes. They hold me, pin me to the spot like a strong memory. I know those eyes, know them as well I as could know anything. They are the eyes of Stevron Katzin. I feel suddenly myself again, the spell of terror is broken. Kat has come. Kat has finally come!

"Inside!" he shouts, grabbing hold of Vanmere and shoving us both down the line. We are going toward the area where the shell had landed in the trench. I pause, horrified by the sight of the carnage but Kat pushes us on.

We cross over it. Vanmere vomits but what is that in comparison to what lay beneath our feet? The sight of such grotesqueries impresses itself upon us as we step onto the other side and begin to run. Kat yells to turn and we fall as another shell bursts the trench wall just ahead of us. A man stumbles toward us and with each light of the explosions I see his injuries in acute focus. Half the man's jaw is gone and his chest looks as though a giant creature had taken a massive bite from it. I see his lung inflate and I run.

We find ourselves in a dugout, a reinforced hole in the trench walls. Inside, the noise of the bombardment is lessened but still loud enough to ring our ears. I collapse on the worn plastoid floor and cough up dirt and mud, neither of which I remember swallowing.

There are other men here, men that seem to know better than to stand on the firing line during a bombardment. Kat explains it to us. They put the new recruits there so the dugouts are not as crowded. When I grow furious at this, Kat calms me down and says that it is simple survival. When he heard that new recruits from our old station had arrived, he'd gone to look for us in a barrage. That was Kat, a big man with startling blue eyes and a loyalty without bounds.

"Here," Kat says and passes us each a plastoid helmet. We don't ask where he got them from for Kat always finds what is needed. "Rotten how they don't outfit the new recruits these days. Your head is bleeding Tomi."

I reach a hand up to touch my forehead and then go further back. It comes back sticky and wet from rain and blood. It is a graze and nothing more, likely a rock had hit me. Kat dries it with a bandage and applies a light amount of bacta. The pain subsides immediately.

"Len with you?" he asks. Shiod grunts and points. "With the medics. They made him a medic."

"Poor bastard," says Kat as he sits down with us. We are all sitting on a bench, shoulders touching. It is so close in here that it is claustrophobic. The heat is intense as well, but that is welcome after the cold outside. The room shakes again and again as the bombardment falls on the trench outside.

We say nothing for a time. I look to Vanmere and discover that he has gone very pale. Kat is looking at him too; his eyes suspicious. "Joph? How for?"

"Fine," Vanmere says. "I'm fine. Fine as ever."

He is not fine, we can see it in his eyes. He looks like a caged animal with his wide eyes that look here and there too quickly. His hands clench and unclench constantly while he grinds his teeth. Now he begins to shake. Kat rises then but is almost too late. Vanmere is up and running for the door.

"Help me!" Kat says as he grabs hold of Vanmere's arm. Shiod and I rush to help and together we wrestle him to the ground. He fights us with kicks and teeth, seemingly gone mad. "Let me out!" he screams. "I want to go out! I'll find it, I'll find it!"

What he'll find we never know, for Kat strikes him hard. It is how one's senses are driven back into our brains. When Vanmere raves again, Kat pushes him back against the ground so hard he groans and coughs. Now a few of the other men in the dugout are on their feet. "Shut him up before he drives us all mad!"

Eventually he does. With Kat's hidings and Shiod and I talking to him, Vanmere comes back to himself. He sits against the wall and begins to sob quietly. There are no more incidents from him.

We have become numb to falling of the shells. Outside of the dugout we watch flashes of ordinance like one might watch a lightning storm. The explosions that rock the room are taken in stride. Once a direct hit cracks the duracrete walls and there is some panic, but the support holds and sit through it.

Kat suggests a game of Sabacc. We try a few hands but we are too intent on listening to each shell's cry outside and are distracted. The fear of them is gone but simple survival remains. If one of the large concussion bombs lands close enough we will have to make a dive for it or be buried alive. When told this, Vanmere turns green but does not try to run again.

Shiod tells a few jokes but humor is lost on us. We sit and wait for the bombardment to stop. We have no concept of time in the little room. It could have been five minutes or five hours, we would not be able to tell you. One simply sits and waits. Some pray. I notice this once in a while, but there are not many. I wonder if this war has blown the faith right out of people.

"They must have unlimited power cells," one of the men growls after a long period of silence. "This is the longest yet."

"They know the Republic has pulled out," Kat says in his calm, cool voice. He has the voice of a leader. If he had given me the order to charge the enemy lines I would have done it without thought. Such is the power of trust.

"But why Kat?" I ask. "Why now?"

"They are brokering a peace treaty with the Empire," he says. I never question how he knows this. He simply does and that's all there is to it. The other men take him at his word too.

"Some peace," Shiod says as a bomb explodes far too close over head. Dirt falls on his head and he sneezes.

"If the Empire takes Verdin before they come to an agreement, it's one more planet they have under their control to bargain with." Kat shrugs, never taking his eyes off the door.

"So why pull out? Why give them the opportunity?" I ask this with a sudden fervor that makes my blood hot. I suddenly want to stand up and shout and curse, but the sensation passes. As another shell sends us all to the ground, I stop wondering about it at all.

"We just need to wait thirty-six hours or so," Kat says as we stumble to our feet again. "Or that's what the bloody Jedi said anyway."

Kat goes stiff and frowns. He is so focused that I grow alarmed. "What is it?" I ask, grabbing for my rifle. He holds out a hand for silence and we all grow deathly silent. After a moment, he speaks. "The bombardment is falling behind us, against the shield instead. Everyone out!"

I don't understand but go out. Vanmere is close behind me but does not seem to need any special assistance. Shiod is out first, looking relieved. "The rain's stopped," he says as we join him. Indeed it has, but the night is still cold and the sight of the battered trench makes me nervous.

There are men already here, hundreds of them all on the firing step with their rifles held at the ready. Kat urges us up onto the ledge and makes sure our helmets are on. We are like children that need his fatherly guidance in this. We are too new to it and if he relaxes his vigil we may soon be lost.

"An attack is coming," he says and risks a glance over the parapet. "Get ready."

I lean against the trench wall and rest my rifle against the top. With a growing sense of fear I sight down my telescopic lens, switching it over to nightvision. In the narrow viewscreen I see a gray and blasted landscape full of holes and shapeless masses. Here and there I see the corpse of a tree, its limbs bent and broken. There I see a mound of flesh that might have been a skeet. Everywhere there are bodies and proximity mines that are yet unexploded.

My vision goes dark as a blast of dirt erupts in front of me. Then blaster fire begins, spattering the ground in front of me with many tiny explosions. I reflexively pull my trigger, sending my own blasts back at them, though I still see no one.

Other weapons are firing now. Down the line I hear a concussive blast go off and in the distance there is a small explosion. From reinforced parapets I see grav rounds tear up distant plots of earth.

Shadows move in the distance and I look over to see Kat beginning with the grenades. He lobs them over one after another silently with a look of determination on his face. I turn back to my rifle and gaze into the explosions and haze of smoke.

The shadows form into armor-clad soldiers. They come unhurriedly in their cold, gray plastoid and faceless helmets. A few fall as blaster rounds find their marks, pitching over without protest or sound.

I aim, lining up a shot at one soldier that carries a gun so large it could have come from a starship. He breaks into a run as explosions burst to life all around him. I wonder briefly how he feels, if he is aware of the madness that this all has become, but I stop myself. I know that if I think on the man behind that mask any longer I will be lost. I pull the trigger.

The shot takes him in throat and I am happy that my good shooting has not left me due to fear or stress. The soldier does not fall like the other had but rather stumbles and drops his weapon. I see him shake and shudder, then claw at his neck and try to pull away his helmet. He goes to his knees, convulsing. I stare in horror at what I'd done.

And then a red blade takes the man's head off.

"Sith!" Kat cries and sets off an alarm on his belt. All down the line men pull slugthrower pistols and place them on the firing ledge, ready to use them when the range is better. I pull mine with a shaking hand. Vanmere does not, but rather fires slowly down range. I try and stop him, to tell him he needs to use something different but he is deaf to me. I grip the slugthrower and hold it in both hands and wait.

In the darkness the red blade comes ever onward.

**3. Over the Top**

The man next to Shiod dies. He is hit by a shell that explodes not a meter from us. In an instant we are covered in dirt. It comes over us like an ocean's wave. My ears and mouth are especially vulnerable and are filled. Kat digs me out and I, gasping and spitting, help Shiod. Vanmere is spared from the whole of it by a stroke of luck.

The dead man lay where he'd previously stood, but only his lower torso and legs remain. The rest is gone, blown away in a blast that leaves the rest of us shaken but otherwise unhurt. I stare until Kat shakes me back to myself.

"Sith!"

He says this twice more before I regain my senses. In the desert of No Man's Land, the enemy is coming to kill us. Leading them is a man in dark armor and armed with a lightsaber. It is an impossible weapon, shedding light when any sane person would pray for darkness to hide in. The light bathes him in light that turns him the color of blood. The sight alone unnerves me.

Vanmere is shooting like a man in a trance. He pulls the trigger in slow, measured motions. Each blaster bolt slides from the muzzle of his rifle methodically every half second. They are aimed poorly and without purpose. He is aiming at the light.

I grab his arm to stop him but not before the red blade deflects a single bolt back at us. It strikes the fortification in front of me. It sounds like a terrible beast raging against a door. Let me in it says. Let me in.

Kat takes charge of Vanmere and I once again take up the slugthrower. I fired a weapon like it only once in training, but the memory is still fresh in my mind. The weapon has a terrible kick and can sprain a man's wrist if he is not careful. I grip it with both hands, steadying the weapon like I was told.

"Ready slugthrowers!" says someone who seems to be in charge. I pull back the slide that loads a slug into the chamber and aim. The Sith isn't even hurrying. He walks toward us, unconcerned. He is so sure of our death that he does not rush to it. We are merely waiting to die.

"Fire!"

I squeeze my hands together, unhinging the safety and freeing the trigger. Blaster bolts are coming from the enemy soldiers now. They are wise to our tactic. Many are rushing to shield the Sith with their bodies or portable energy shields.

The weapon discharges suddenly. The trigger does not have the heavy pull I remembered from training and it snaps back almost of its own accord. It barks fire before my eyes. Pops and cracks echo all down the trench as others fire. Shiod is firing his weapon constantly, screaming obscenities in his fear-driven fervor. I fire only once.

The Sith is struck several times, but none seem to hurt him. Several slugs simply stop before him and tumble to the ground as if they had struck an invisible wall. Other slugs slam into soldiers whose armor is not as thick. They scream and fall.

Then the Sith leaps and he is among us. He lands to the right of the line, cutting down a man with officer colors on his armor. The red blade arches down through the man's neck and shoulder, cleaving like a hot knife through butter. There is no scream, no sound at all. The soldier merely falls to pieces before our eyes.

"Bring him down!" That is Kat. I turn, intending to shoot at the Sith, to do what Kat asks. I do not comprehend then how important training is to us. They train us so we do not hesitate, do not question, do not think. We are not men, we are weapons to be aimed. In that instant, I hesitate. I am not fully trained, nor is Shiod or Vanmere. We turn but a breath goes by before we react.

Two more men die in that breath. The red blade swings in a wide arc, cutting off a man's head and cleaving through another's weapon, shoulder and chest. Blaster fire erupts from both sides, mixed with the pops and cracks of slugthrowers.

Vanmere fires and misses Shiod by a hair. A crossfire springs to life and men die on both sides of our enemy, killed by our own desperation to survive. A slug skins my cheek while a blaster bolt burns through the sleeve of my armored jacket. I feel no pain. I feel only a great suffocation of fear.

The Sith begins to turn toward us. Men have abandoned firearms for vibroswords and combat knives. The butchery begins in earnest then, the lightsaber stopped only occasionally by vibro weapons built for such a purpose.

One man has the blade impale him, but he manages to sink a knife into the Sith's thigh. A grenade attaches itself to the Sith's arm, pulsing quickly. Kat pulls me back and I grab Shiod. Vanmere is missing and there is no time to look for him. We must escape the blast, find safety in a dugout, a mound of earth, anything.

The Sith shouts and runs at a group of soldiers too slow to escape him. Kat pushes us behind a corner of the trench and I hear the explosion. I cover my ears but I feel something inside them and panic. A brief insanity comes over me and I fear a slug has caught me in the head. My fingers dig inside, only to come away covered in mud.

Behind Kat I see the first soldier come to the top of our trench. The helmet reminds me of a skull printed upon a bucket that has been turned upside down. He is aiming a rifle at us. I don't know where my rifle came from, but perhaps in the confusion I picked it up. I fire again and again and again. The man falls face first, landing with a sickening crunch on that skull-like helmet.

Kat smiles at me but the attack is on us. Imperial soldiers crest the trench, firing and throwing grenades. A repeating blaster cuts down several of the imperial attackers right in front of us before they can fire, while others leap into the trench to escape. Kat is on them quickly, working with his knife.

Shiod and I move to help him. Humanity is lost to us then. It is a thing for other times, for when we sit in school and answer questions of history and language. It belongs to a Tomi Adken much younger, a Tomi of yesterday, of five hours ago. Forever ago.

We are driven by something more than fear. It is a sort of madness that pushes us as we set to our bloody work. When I stab my first man in the back and feel the resistance of the armor give way to softer, shivering flesh, I am neither happy nor repulsed. I do it and then I move and shove my knife beneath the arm of another. With each thrust I feel neither satisfied or horrified, but merely driven to go on.

I fall as a soldier lands heavily upon me. We roll in the mud and ankle-deep water. I have the advantage with my simple combat hat. His mask fills with water and his hands grasp at it. I turn over and strike home over and over again until the body spasms and goes still. I do not even comprehend that he is a man like myself.

Why do we forget in these times of senseless slaughter that our knives are killing, taking a man with memories and loves and experience quickly from the world? It is a matter of simple, senseless facts. We kill because a man is there and he might kill me. I pick up my rifle and pull the trigger so my blaster bolt explodes the throat of another because his rifle is slower. He dies because I do not. There is no training for this kind of killing. It is not a skill, it is a fugue. The images are not stored for my memory and I will forget. I must forget.

We are free of them then and Shiod grins at me. His pale face is covered in blood and dirt and his helmet is gone, his mud-colored hair matted with filthy water. Kat has Vanmere by the arm, and so he has survived after all.

The enemy comes ever onward and our line is forced back along the trench. We run, pulling the safeties from grenades and tossing them behind us. It will slow their progress. Kat pulls down razor wire like a gate and fires his rifle into it, energizing the trap. Should anyone run through it, the wire will snag and cut and tangle.

The escape takes us to a communication trench and we duck as shells explode overhead. A piece of exploded metal catches Shiod in the back, throwing flesh and blood into my eyes. He screams but does not fall. Blaster fire behind us makes me forget about his wound entirely.

Kat turns and throws, his grenade exploding in the midst of four imperial soldiers. For a moment I'm blinded, but the shouts of his victims turn into anguished cries. When my vision clears, there are three corpses. The fourth man caught the grenade in the chest and has been blown to bits.

"Here!" Kat shouts and we dig in with others along a secondary trench. The counter attack begins in earnest now, our line firing in rapid succession into the attacking force. Imperial soldiers fall in droves, clogging choke points with their dead. It is along these choke points that we stop them. Grav cannons pour into them while grenades reap a deadly harvest of blood and metal.

I lose track of time. The rifle's vibrations make my hands and arms numb. My vision blurs from all the flashing lights and I think of nothing but firing into that valley of death.

After a time more shouting comes down the line. Kat taps me on the shoulder and waves to follow. I do the same for Shiod and Vanmere. Shiod has applied a bacta bandage to his back and assures me he's fine. Vanmere says nothing, but comes, pale with eyes half-closed.

We retake the front line trench with ease. The enemy is retreating, fighting only to return across No Man's Land. An officer is waving his hands forward. He is shouting words that do not inspire nor fill me with regret. They are simply words. Words, words, words.

"Over the top boys! Over the top now!"

We pick up the cry like a chorus, a senseless song of murderous, righteous fury. My vision narrows, seeing only the mud of the trench, the steps, and then the field beyond. We go over, crossing into No Man's Land and running, screaming.

Shells rush to meet us. They explode overhead and rain down molten metal on us. One moment I am running along with an older man with graying hair, his long mustaches flowing, and the next he has no face. He falls without a word.

Shiod leaps a crater with a single jump. Kat is not carrying a rifle but a digging shovel. Vanmere lags behind and is lost in the advance.

We cross razor wire cut to shreds countless shells. Proximity mines lay like spined mounds across the dark landscape. Nearby, a man trips one and the explosion cuts off his feet. He runs on the bloody stumps for a few meters before collapsing in a shell hole. I take all this in without feeling. They are images I may well deal with later, but for now they mean nothing to me.

Blaster fire opens up before us. Two men to my left fall. One to my right cries out, grabs my coat but I push him away and keep running. We must get to their trench, must kill them or they will keep coming and the night will never end. In my senseless thoughts, ending the night is all there is to me. One night is the whole of my life and my future.

We reach an autocannon nest and Kat caves in a man's helmet with his shovel. I instantly see the use in the weapon. It is heavy and blunt and crushes armor with a single swing. Against the unarmored mortar crews it is even more effective. The sharpened edges get a man beneath the chin or cleave through shoulders. Shiod and I fire into the ammunition boxes to explode them.

The enemy trench is shallower than our own and we leap into it, throwing grenades and using the stocks of our weapons. It is close, bloody work. Kat kills two men emerging from a dugout. We duck into it and he has us take all the food we can. We leave the dugout with grenades dropped behind us.

The enemy retreats into their deeper trenches and we follow as far as we dare. There are only a handful of us when the enemy turns and digs in. Here we also turn and begin to make our way back. We are not here to capture the position for we are too few. I understand this at once. We came only to take what they took from us. We are weapons aimed and nothing more.

On the way out we take as many clips of ammunition, pouches of food and grenades as we can find. We collapse any dugouts we find and shoot any corpses that twitch. When we climb out of the narrow trench, we are even more heavily burdened than we'd been going in.

We escape into a copse of trees, thin and ghostlike in the darkness. Mist and smoke mingle like wraiths in the light of illumination shells as they explode overhead. Kat turns around and around and curses.

"What's up Kat?" I ask.

"I've lost my way. Need a moment."

Shiod and I exchange a look. Kat is never lost and he never forgets a thing. He is simply making sure. To go the wrong way now would take us back into that blaster fire. We need to get back to our line. There is life. The other way is only death.

Kat grunts and waves us onward. We follow, no longer running but jogging. Our exhaustion is setting in but we dare not stop here. How far is our line? A hundred meters? Two hundred? Half a kilometer? I have no idea how far I ran, the whole of it is lost to me.

"Get down!" Kat shouts and drops to the ground. We follow suit just as the ground begins to explode around us. Trees are ripped free and throw into the air. Splinters fly just over our heads, wooden shrapnel as deadly as any shell or mine.

The bombardment is quick but reduces the small section of trees to stumps and broken trunks. I risk a quick look around and see something that chills me to my core. I know why the attack has stopped. It has delivered death not with explosions but with something more sinister. It rises and mixes with the mist and smoke, twisting and blowing toward us with measured finality.

Gas.

**4. No Man's Land**

When I was a child, I often stood in a field of poppies behind my house. My mother would pretend to not see me there and call out to me, over and over. Standing there, I felt invisible, with the grass to my knees and the Balmorran sun reflecting off the lakes. In that field of red and green nothing could hurt me. Nothing could take me away. Even my mother was not immune to it.

I stare now at the dull red petals of a poppy plant. Even in the darkness I make out the color when star shells explode. They are the color of blood and cover this wasteland from which there is no return. I lay in the land of the dead where the living should not go. No Man's Land they call it. We were not men when we crossed into it. We were beasts, driven mad by fear and blood rage. Now humanity returns and we are no longer welcome here.

The gas creeps along the ground toward us like an ocean's wave, cresting shell holes and billowing over bodies and debris. In the darkness it is a gray mist. In the light of the star shells it is a pale yellow, like the color of dying flesh. It reaches for us with foul smelling tendrils, curling under and around our limbs, seeking purchase on exposed skin. It leaps for our noses and throats, wanting to be let in. Once inside it will destroy us, bloat our faces and bring blood from our lungs to our lips.

It is a silent death. This reaper culls in silence and so we must be silent as well. We hush our own voices in hope that it does not seek us out. The dying are the only ones who break that silence. To hear nothing means life and I hastily pull my gas mask into place with the hope that none of my friends shall call out.

The seals click and I inhale stale air tainted by the sourness of my own breath. The gas flows around me, stinging my flesh where it finds purchase. Already I feel blisters forming where it touches me. First one, then ten, a hundred insect bites burrowing and burning. I try to stand up, to run away and flee this horror but I am held down. A hand is grasping my shoulder straps, keeping me there. I struggle, wanting to scream in my sudden terror.

It is only Kat and when I realize this I stop struggling. My breathing is harder now, having wasted so much of it in my panic. The rebreather recycles my own air but its limited in its use and we can not stay here. Shiod crawls to me on the other side and nodes. We are all here, all alive.

Kat points and we begin to crawl away in that direction. Around us are splintered remains of the trees that once sheltered us. We come at once upon a body. He didn't get his mask on in time and I stare into the wide, protruding eyes. They implore me to save him, to do something. They ask why he is dead and why I am alive.

We can not linger and begin to run as more shells fall. At first I fear more gas but they are explosive instead. They pour down from the sky in all directions, filling the landscape with blossoming clouds of fire. Instantly I imagine myself in that field of red poppies, invisible. I can not be hurt, can not be touched.

A shell explodes behind me and I am thrown in the air by the concussive force of it. I feel like I'm in the air for hours and when I land, I hit hard onto the slope of a shell hole and slide to the bottom. My mask is damaged, my helmet nearly ripped apart. I feel something wet on my neck and under my arms. I also taste something foul that burns my tongue.

The gas! I spit and am on my feet instantly, clawing my way up out of the hole. My lungs begin to burn but I ignore it, pretending that I am only winded. I tell myself that over and over. I am only winded. I am only winded! The charge took too much from me, that's all.

"Kat!" I shout but another explosion drowns out my voice. I look up and realize that the shells are not imperial but are coming from my own lines. Why are they firing on us? Has everyone lost their minds? "Kat!"

Perhaps I'm turned around and those shells are imperial after all. Should I turn back? Go the way I came? Where is Kat? Where is Shiod? I am alone and my lungs are burning. I feel dizzy as well and in danger of passing out. I call out again but my tongue feels thick in my mouth. The vomit that comes up afterward is dark and thick. Staring at it, I wonder if I'm dying and if I will ever see Kat, Shiod, Lenmerer or Vanmere again. Will my parents ever hear what happened? Will they even know I've died? The stories of mass graves takes hold and I am more afraid of that then of actually dying.

"Kat!"

And then Shiod is there, lifting one of my arms over his thin, bony shoulders. I lean on him and we limp away. There is Kat, waving to us as another explosion hits a tree to our right. Shards of burning wood fly past us and one buries itself in my leg. I cry out and nearly go down but Shiod manages to keep me up. He's hurt too, I know this somehow but there's no time to argue.

The smell of burning wood assaults me. There is also the scent of freshly turned earth, mixed with blood and something else that reminds me of going to the butchery. I vomit again and Shiod holds a cloth to my broken mask.

"Hang in, I have you!"

We stumble through shells and fire blossoms and proximity mines. The three of us are ghost-like travelers in the dark and Kat is our guide. He probes the ground ahead of him and keeps his sharpened shovel at the ready. Finally the explosions seem to lessen and we move faster. I feel fresh air on my exposed, burning skin and I know I must be dying. Nothing in this place would feel so sweet, so clean, so pure. I am unworthy of it and feel instantly dirty.

I am handed to someone else then, Kat maybe but I can no longer see. The coughing that wracks my body now is so painful I can no longer stand or open my eyes. Above me, someone says "swallowed a bit of gas" and then something pinches my leg. I claw for consciousness, desperate to know what is happening.

When I open my eyes, Len is standing above me. I am laying down and all around me are the walls of the trenches. We've made it then, I am alive. Joy erupts in me, safe in the knowledge that I am not bound for an unmarked mass grave. My parents will know what happened to me. Kat will see to it. Kat... Kat...

Darkness.

The fields go on forever. The breeze is clean and brisk and refreshing as it comes off the lake. The rock in my hand is smooth and perfect for skipping and when I toss it, I get three hops before it sinks.

"Want to see if I can get it all the way to the other side?" I ask, turning to her. I frown because she's not looking at me. Instead, she's sitting on her knees, looking away towards the mountains.

"Eris?" I ask. "Eris what is it?"

"We could go, you know." She looks back at me, her face streaked with tears. They're still flowing, collecting at her jawline and dripping onto her bare legs. I drop the stone I'd just picked up and go to her.

"Go where?"

"Into the mountains," she says, shrugging her shoulders and entwining my fingers with her own. "Before they get here. We could make it. You're a good shot, we could live off rock cats and snow berries. I know what they look like."

I chuckle. "What are you talking about?"

"The Empire. It's coming. My brother, he..."

"He makes up stories all the time."

"No! Tomi, listen, okay? He's a fighter pilot, in the advanced fleet. He sent me this message, and he said... he said its coming to Balmorra."

I shake my head and lean forward, kissing her forehead. Even now, she's beautiful. Her skin is so pale that even our distant sun will burn it if she's not careful. I run my finger along the faint blue line of a vein in her thigh the way I also do when I'm fascinated by her. Her fears are almost endearing in their simplicity, but I know better. The Republic is on Balmorra. I haven't told her yet, but I'm going to join up when school is done. I'll take her with me after and we'll travel among the stars and see other planets.

"It's not coming." I stand up and find another rock. "Trust me, we'll be fine."

"Please! Please just... let's run away. You and me, okay? Just you and me."

"I can't leave Shiod," I say, tossing another rock into the lack. It skips two times, wide apart, but not far enough to touch the far bank. "He'll never pass his tests."

She hugs me from behind. Her tears soak the back of my shirt and it makes me irritated. Why does she always have to blow everything out of proportion? The Empire is so far away. The war is so very far away.

I turn but she's no longer there. The field is gone too and the breeze has turned hot and fetid, thick with the smell of medpacks and blood. I'm coughing, desperate for air. I'm on my back, bandages over my eyes and I can't see, I can't see!

"Eris!" I cry. "Eris where are you!"

"Easy," someone tells me. It's a man, not Eris. He's got my hand though, massaging the palm to wake me up. Kat. It's Kat, I know his voice. I'm not back at home and I'm not with Eris. She's gone, it's all gone now. I'm in the trenches at Verdin.

"I can't see Kat, why can't I see?"

"Here," says Len. I know his voice too. I remember now, I'd been wounded by the shells and the gas. My right leg is itching horribly and I'm suddenly very afraid they've removed it.

"Kat! Tell me my leg is still there. They haven't taken my leg have they?"

"No," Len answers instead and peels away the darkness. A bandage is lifted away and I stare up at a pale gray sky. I stare into it, uncomprehending until I realize its morning. I've lived through the night, survived the attacks and our mad charge across No Man's Land.

Shiod leans his grinning face into view and holds up a bag with a jagged piece of metal in it. "Look at this! They dug it out my back. I'm going to mail it to my girlfriend as a souvenir."

"You don't have a girlfriend you fool," Kat says, but there is a note of amusement in his voice so the comment doesn't sting. Shiod goes right on anyway.

"Well not yet of course, not yet. But when I do! I'm mailing it to her right away. I'll say, 'Hey sweetheart, look at how brave I am! I carried this and my buddy across the battlefield.'" He winks at me. "Only I can't mail Tomi, so this will do."

"You're barking mad," Len says and wipes something cool and wet across my face. It smells like bacta. "Hold still," he says. "You're as squirmy as Shiod."

"Hey Len," Shiod says. "Is it true you had to go into No Man's Land to get wounded last night?"

"Yes," Len says and finishes with my face. He turns his attention on my leg and the itching begins to go away. Shiod leans over me until his face is obscured.

"Did you find Vanmere?"

There is silence and it's a silence that goes on and on while Len works. We wait, not letting him off the hook so easily. Finally, I hear him sigh. "No."

"Oh," Shiod says and I hear him get up and walk away. I do not grasp the situation quickly but slowly, a sense of loss takes me. Vanmere is not coming back. I can still see him, wide-eyed and tripping as we go over the top of the trench. I see him lag behind, running on his thick legs. I think I even remember him shouting for me to wait. To wait. Please Tomi, wait for me.

I shut my eyes and wait for the dream to end, if it is a dream at all. I want to go back to the late and remember Eris with her flowing black hair, so long she often sits on it. Her face was not as beautiful as some but for me, she was all I could want.

"You all right?" Kat asks me, his voice a low whisper. "I'll sneak you a drink when Len stops playing nurse maid."

"That'll be good," I tell him and force a smile. "And I'm fine. I'll be fine."

We fall silent and I turn my gaze back to the sky. The clouds are almost gone and so the rain will not return. I find my breathing is easier so Len must have fixed that. I shut my eyes and inhale deeply.

For just a moment I smell clean, lake-side air and think of the mountains.

**5. Mercy**

It is mid-day by the time I'm allowed to sit up. Len doesn't say it but Kat does. Even this is too soon, but they need every man who can hold a rifle. It's been a little over half a day since the Republic forces pulled out and a full day left before their reinforcements arrive.

"It's less than a day," Kat says as I hobble through the medical station with Shiod. Shiod is proposing a game of pazaak and we're in search of Len again, full of purpose that we'll steal him away from the center long enough for a game. Ever since Shiod spilled the news about Vanmere, Len hasn't been around.

"A day is a long time," Shiod says and spits, as if the number is grit in his mouth. We've already gotten used to eating with dirt in our rations. Refreshers are a long forgotten dream here and it's felt like an age since I was clean.

"It's not so long as that," Kat says and grabs the pazaak cards from Shiod's hands. "Just long enough for you to lose your whole family fortune."

"Good luck with that," Shiod says, shrugging bony shoulders. "Empire took that a year ago."

"Don't you get a stipend yet?" I ask him, confused by this news. He's never shared it before. Shiod has always been the boy with money, the scion son of a merchant family. You wouldn't know it by looking at him. Kat always joked that he was so tight with credits that his shrewdness alone would shield him from vacuum.

"Some," he admits and grabs the cards back, shuffling them deftly in his long, thin fingers. They slide together quietly, the plasteel worn with use and slick with grime. There is no table here in the trenches so we'll have to play without counters. It's no big deal really, the cards will play with their face value only, unable to shift or switch electronically. We've only a few smoke-sticks and rations to gamble with, so it won't matter if we win or lose. The distraction is all we want.

Shiod stops outside the medical tent where we've been told Len is working. "Listen, my brother is running guns to a resistance cell in the southern continent. What little we get from the Republic for it is all I manage. My mom and dad, well they're counting credits for the Empire now. Don't tell Len though, all right? I don't want another lecture about helping the enemy."

Kat and I look at one another and Shiod steps inside. We exchange information silently, amused and shocked by this small, but unexpected news. Shiod's brother is younger than we are, sixteen or seventeen. He's never shown a single hint of talent in anything but now he's smuggling? Kat spreads his hands before him and shrugs. I agree and nod my head.

"The bleeding Force is this?"

The voice is Shiod's and his exclamation is nearly loud enough to make me jump. We quickly duck inside and see him standing there, mouth open, eyes squinted and his narrow, rat-like nose wrinkled up like he'd just sniffed a sewer back up. I follow his gaze and find myself transfixed as well.

Laying on a cot, with Len poised to apply a kolto injection, is a girl. She's young, perhaps a little older than we are. Her face is dirty and bleeding from a number of surface cuts. Blonde hair is pulled tight into a knot, flat against the back of her head and eyes the color of freshly churned earth stare up at him with a mix of hatred and confusion.

What shocks us most is the imperial armor she wears.

"Not so loud!" Len says, turning to wave at Shiod. "It wasn't easy to get her here."

"I should guess not," Kat says, his voice even but there's a touch of wariness in it. "What are you doing?"

"She's been hit in the lung. I removed the shrapnel but it'll need kolto or it'll collapse and bleed out." He's removed her breastplate enough to work, cut away the self-cleaning zero-suit beneath enough to show pale skin and its red wound.

"Do not touch me," she hisses, but her voice is strained with pain. It sounds wet, like she's trying to talk while swallowing water. The accent is unmistakable. She tries to raise her hands to stop Len from applying the kolto but they're tied to the cot.

Shiod manages to catch his wrist instead, stopping it before it touches her. Len struggles against it. "Let go of me, she needs this. She'll die without it."

"So what?" Shiod wrenches Len's arm backward, but the medical injection stays firmly gripped in Len's hand. He cringes, groaning from the pain of it and Kat steps in, pulling Shiod off of him and shoving Len back from the cot.

"Are you mad, Lenmerer? We're out gunned ten to one out there and you want to save one?"

Len is on his knees, rubbing his shoulder and glaring at all of us. He looks back at the girl, who has closed her eyes again She's begun to tremble and I risk a glance outside before securing the flap.

Kat is looking at me and I shake my head. He gestures to Len and helps him up again. "Do it if you're going to but I think you've taken a few too many shots to the head."

"You're going to let him?" Shiod shouts and Kat grabs him by the arm and drags him back towards me. "Shut up," he says. "She might know something we can use and..." He looks at me, sees that I am thinking the same thing. We've seen enough death today. I'm thinking of Vanmere and hoping that some imperial medic might be doing this same thing for him.

Len kneels at her cot and gently inserts the kolto. I see her wince, eyes pressed shut tightly and then she relaxes. Her lips part and she exhales slowly. It still sounds wet, but steady.

Shiod wrestles free of Kat but does nothing to interfere, just crosses his arms and glares at us. Then he turns and leaves too quickly for us to stop him.

Len looks up, alarmed but Kat holds out a hand. "He won't go making a scene. He's just upset because you always scold him about his parents turning traitor." Len sighs, and slumps against the tent's support post. He looks ten years older, not a boy of eighteen but a man, lined and beaten.

"Was it very bad last night?" Kat asks, sitting on a folding chair nearby. "After the raid?"

Len doesn't even open his eyes. "One-hundred and twenty-seven dead, fourteen were brought off the field but died on the table or in the mud outside. Thirty-eight lost limbs. One lost half his face. He wouldn't stop talking. Half of his jaw was gone but he kept... he kept..."

He covers his face and begins to weep. Kat and I look at one another but we know there is nothing to say. We lived through last night, and are hardly worse for wear. I took wounds, yes, but kolto and time will short work of them and my limp will fade over the years. So we go to him and sit, one on either side. Our shoulders support him and we crouch together on the dirt floor like we used to on our camping trips.

We'd find a quiet place and just rest there, shoulder to shoulder and never say a word. The three of us all lost so much in the early parts of the war. Len lost his older brother early in the fighting, then his father later on. His sister was taken during an evacuation of her university and the reports we've heard of her turned my stomach.

Kat lost his uncle, two cousins and a mother to the fighting. I lost the least, though the two of them talk to me as if I've lost everything. Eris's death was quick. Her house was hit with an orbital strike when they thought our town housed munitions. She didn't suffer, but when I look up, I know this girl is.

She is looking at Len, her eyes still narrowed with suspicion but there is less hatred in her expression. She says nothing and so we commune with our enemy in silence, the four of us sharing this moment of peace together.

Finally, she closes her eyes and drifts to sleep. Kat and I rise to go and leave Len where he is. We never ask him to play pazaak. I feel like he's lost enough already.

Later, we are back on the front line. I sit on the firing step with my back to the reinforced support of a dug out. I've smoked the third stick of my life and enjoy the feeling of calm it settles on me. My lungs are burning but after the gas, I hardly notice it.

Kat whittles a small figure out of some wood he's found using his combat knife. The lines are crude but shaped with such delicate care that I imagine he's thinking of his sister. She wanted to be a pazaak champion, even though she wasn't old enough to know what pazaak was. When Kat and I used to play hologames of any sort in his room, she would come in and announce she was going to be champion of them as well.

"Do you think they'll come?" I ask, surprising even myself with the sudden topic. "The Republic, I mean?"

Kat's shoulders rise and fall without stopping his work. He goes on for a few moments and says, "Suppose we'll see." I lean my head back against the dugout support and feel the sun caressing my face. The touch is gentle, almost like hers. I lower it, not wanting to think of Eris anymore than I have to.

"Brandy," Shiod says, tromping up to us so loudly I expect shell fire to begin landing on his position. He hands me a mug of it and sits down, handing one to Kat. This is Shiod's apology and we forgive him by drinking down the foul-tasting liquid. I doubt it's real brandy, but its warming.

"Word is the imps are going to push again," he says without looking at either of us. He pulls out a cracker and eats it noisily, the crumbs falling onto his chin and catching in the thin growth that's begun. I've never known a boy to grow a faster beard than Shiod. He wipes the crumbs off and licks his fingers.

"Makes sense," Kat says, finally putting down the little carving. "I doubt they're ignorant of the Republic's plan to return. The treaty talks are going on right now, so I understand."

Shiod snorts and spits into the mud between his boots, then scratches at his chin. "Waste of time. I say they just bust on in here with some heavy cruisers and waste the imp's trenches. Then we'll walk out of here and grab some real shut-eye."

Kat grunts and opens his mouth to say something when there's a shout down the line. I grab my rifle, a sniper's model now. The last marksman on our line was killed in the raid and so I've inherited it. Spoils of war are never to be wasted.

"What's this?" Kat asks, and two men down from us make a motion towards No Man's Land. "Attack?" he asks, and then turns to peek over the top.

I turn too and slip my rifle into the sniper's hole at the top of the trench. It's a small slot just wide enough to fit my rifle's barrel and scope into it. I can fire into No Man's Land and to the enemy trench without fear of being exposed from this position.

At first I don't see anything. The blasted area between the lines is barren except for blasted mines, slip-wire and corpses that the medics couldn't get to before daylight. Once the area brightened, snipers pick off medics before they can even get to a wounded man. Every dead medic is a shot to our morale.

"Cruel," Kat says almost too quietly for me to hear. I'm about to turn away and ask him when I see it too. A figure is moving in No Man's Land, crawling on one hand and his knees. The other hand is clutching his stomach, which has his guts spilling from it. It's not until the poor wretch cries out that feel my whole body go cold.

"Momma!" Vanmere wails over and over. My hands are shaking on the rifle but I can't look away. I zoom in on him, focus on his face. His eyes are gone. Where they were is just black, scorched pitch. A mine must have caught him just above his belt. What spills between his fingers brings my recent drink to the back of my throat and I heave it onto the trench wall in front of me.

"Momma!"

I hear it so clearly now. The wail is pitiful, like a wounded animal's death cries. It comes again and again and I swear it's aimed at me. It's telling me to come get him, that I'm leaving him there to die, blaming me for all of this. Tomi you've killed me! Tomi you've done this to me!

"Momma!"

I clamp my hands over my ears but it does nothing to shut out the sound. He's dead, there's nothing I can do. He's dead. He'll be dead very soon. He'll die very soon. He's dead. He's dead.

"I'm going to get him," Shiod says and my eyes snap open. No! A sniper will get him! It's a trap. They want us to go out there, to find where we are. I reach for Shiod but Kat is faster, hauling him down onto the firing step and clutching him, holding him while Shiod screams to be let go.

"Finish it," Kat says to me. At first I don't understand, can't comprehend what he could mean but then he raises his chin towards my rifle. Any blood left in my face is gone, I feel it escape. My fingers go stiff and cold around the rifle. I feel its metal chill and nearly drop it, sickened by the feel of it.

"Momma!"

"Don't, Tomi! Don't! He's our friend, we have to help him!" Shiod is mad, wriggling out of Kat's grasp and scrambling for the top of the trench. It takes three men to keep him inside, but even still an imperial sniper bolt blows off two of his fingers. He falls backward into the bottom of the trench, screaming in pain and shouting for Vanmere.

I stare, transfixed by the scene until Kat slaps me. "Do it, Tomi. Do you understand? You're the best shot in the unit. If I try, I might hurt him worse. Give him a peaceful death, we owe him that much."

We owe him that much. I know these words are true. The chaos around me feels so unreal to me that these simple things are enough to get me moving. I return my rifle to the sniper's hole and sight in on Vanmere.

"Momma!"

"Stop it!" I shout. I can't do it. My knees are made of water, my fingers have no bones in them. The sight of him makes it all too horrific.

"It's a mercy," Kat says, holding my face in both of his large hands. His eyes are so clear they hold mine. Kat who has been here for me since we arrived. Kat who saved me from the gas, from the raid, from myself. I trust Kat. I must do this because Kat knows I should.

"Okay," I say.

Vanmere is on his knees, trying to stuff pieces of himself back inside. His whole body is shaking and he must be crying though tears are impossible. I sight in on him, aiming for the bolt to strike his temple. At this angle I know it will be swift. It must be swift.

"Momma!"

He turns toward me, the ruins of his eyes seem to stare at me, find me in my hiding spot. His mouth opens, building the words to condemn me when the front of his head explodes. He falls slowly forward into a shell hole and is at once gone from my sight.

I lower my rifle and go to my knees, shaking to the point where drop the weapon. I failed him. Vanmere was my friend and I left him to die out there in No Man's Land and when I found him, I did nothing. I couldn't even give him peace.

Kat's hand is on my shoulder. He offers me a smoke-stick and I take it, lighting it without thought. For a long time we say nothing. Then Kat gets up.

"Someone over there," he says and walks away. His words mean nothing to me until I put a meaning to them. I think of the girl Len saved. I think of how she might have died, gasping for air as she chokes on her own blood. He saved her, gave her mercy. Someone over there did what I couldn't.

They gave mercy to Vanmere.

**6. The Promises We Keep**

The letter to Vanmere's family goes poorly. I crouch in the mud outside a medical tent with Kat while we wait for word on Shiod. My hands touch the datapad but the words that come are stiff and meaningless. They form no sentences, create no explanations for the woman who made me promise to look after her son out there.

At first I wanted to tell her the truth, that I'd failed to do what she asked. I would write that we'd gotten separated and I hadn't looked for him. I left him to die in No Man's Land without a second thought. Me, I killed him as sure as the sniper's bolt.

Kat reminded me that it wasn't that simple. He made me remember that insane charge across open ground with explosions all around us. It was dark, so very dark that you could hardly see a meter in front of you. Our only guidance came from the muzzle flashes of our enemy's guns and the star shells that exploded overhead. We rushed towards death just like a ship would rush to ruin by following a lighthouse.

"Why did we do it?" I asked him, but Kat only shrugged and told me that was how it was. That was how it was, that's what I should tell her. I should write to her what war really is, that her son rushed to death because that's all there was to it. There is no glory in taking a Grav shell to the abdomen, no heroics in tripping a proxy mine. It is just what it is. Senseless.

"I can't do it," I say and toss Kat the datapad. I smoke another stick, my fifth in an hour. Back home I never touched the things but by now I'm a professional. I could light a smoke-stick in a downpour. This skill is one they should have taught us in school, it has served me better than the history of Balmorra's fifth ruler.

Kat puts away the datapad and lights up as well. Together we sit and stare up at a blue sky, its fluffy clouds mixed with the puffs of anti-aircraft fire. We watch a dogfight break out between one of our Talons and two Sith Interceptors.

"That's Renzler up there," Kat says. "Two sticks he gets them both."

I take the bet because if I don't, there will be no game. I have enough smoke-sticks to last me a week, they give them out by the handfuls. By the time I agree, Renzler's Talon has already blasted one Interceptor to dust. The other drops like a stone but Renzler doesn't take the bait. Instead he circles wide and climbs.

Inevitably the imperial pilot pulls up, having hoped his pursuer followed. Kat points. "Interceptors are better climbers. I've seen it a dozen times. They fall and then swoop up like a fishcatcher bird. Our Talons can't pull out of a dive like that in atmosphere."

Renzler has the imperial pilot's number and guns him down quickly. Then he shoots toward us and comes low, two missiles fly from beneath his wings and strike at the enemy trenches. We cheer him, but we know the effort was pointless. The imperials are too far dug in for his weapons to destroy. Still, we appreciate the sentiment.

"What we need are some bombers, that'll break up those duracrete bunkers," Kat says. "We had a few before you got here but the imps went at them pretty hard. The last ones left with the Jedi."

Renzler returns, wagging his wings at us as he passes overhead. We cheer him again but the whole of the effort was wasted. There will be more imperial fighters, more anti-aircraft. Sooner or later, Renzler will be just a memory.

"Where are the imperial bombers?" I ask. "They could bake us in here."

Kat shrugs. "Our fighters will get them if they come, but they haven't been seen in weeks." That's the last of it and we lapse into silence again.

Lenmerer comes out of the tent and spits into the mud at our feet. I look up at him, raising my eyebrows in curiosity. Len eyes me, rubs at his jaw and flops down next to me. I don't ask him. Len will tell me what he's come to say in his own time.

After almost a minute he sighs and steals a smoke-stick from me but doesn't light it. Len would never smoke, but he always has to have something to do with his hands. In school he would always be rustling disks or tapping at his datapad.

"Shiod is fine, I have him under a good amount of kolto because he punched me right in the damn jaw," he says and indicates a slightly red spot on his cheek.

"So he'll pull through," Kat says, gazing up at the sky.

"It was just a few fingers, he could do with less. Unfortunately they didn't blow off the expressive one." Len grunts and stands up. "I need to get back. I hear there will be another attack later today?"

Kat exhales a long trail of gray smoke and turns his eyes back on Len. "My bet is sundown, but who knows?"

"Can we see him?" I ask, getting up and brushing off my pants. The mud is thick on them and it cakes my hands. I try to wipe them off but there is little of me that isn't covered in it. I settle for smearing the top of my helmet with the stuff. Len jabs a finger back toward the tent.

"Better make it fast."

When we see him, Shiod tries to raise himself out of the cot and groans. I can see at once that Len was conservative on his wounds. The last two fingers of his left hand are gone and his right leg has some pressure catches of kolto I didn't remember him having before.

His face is dirty and when I sit next to his cot, I have to resist the urge to wipe it away. He is so small and thin that he looks like a little boy laying there. It is in this moment, as Kat stands on the other side of the cot, that I feel a sudden and irresistible sense of loss.

These are my friends. Len, Shiod, Vanmere and I grew up together since we were very young. Kat came later but has been just as important, perhaps more important. Through all the trivial problems with Eris, with school, with parents and growing up, these four were there, always.

Now one of us is gone, his body lying broken and abandoned in a lonely shell hole full of mud and rats. Another lays here, wounded and in pain and I can do nothing but tell him that he looks ridiculous. He grins, his overly large teeth making his face look uncomfortably like a corpse mask. The blood is all gone in his face, and in its place a yellow-green pallor.

"Not so bad, look!" Shiod says and holds up his wounded hand, a single finger showing. It's a crude gesture, derogatory and pathetic, but on Shiod, it's comical. I laugh despite myself.

"Nice," is the only thing I think to say.

"You'll probably be sent up," Kat says. "First transport out if you're lucky."

Shiod's grin fades away and a shadow falls across his face. He looks suddenly like an old man with yellowing eyes and deep lines. His scowl unnerves me.

"I don't want to be sent up. I want to go back with you guys."

"Don't talk stupid," I say. "You can't hold a rifle with that hand."

"Can so," Shiod says. "Ask Len, I punched him just to show him I could. Well that and for..." he looks around and lowers his voice. "For the girl."

Kat leans over Shiod and prods him in the chest with one of his big fingers. "Listen. Up there is nothing but hell. You get the chance to get out, you take it. You're lucky, I know a couple hundred boys who'd have loved to get a wound like yours."

"I'm not them," Shiod says and struggles to sit up again. Kat holds him down with little effort. Still, Shiod struggles. "A prosthetic and I'm fine. Hells, I can hold a rifle with two fingers. I can hold a pistol, throw a grenade..."

"Listen moron," I start to say but there's something very wrong in Shiod's expression. I can't place it but it unnerves me. He struggles again and his wounded hand clamps onto my arm and shakes it.

"Let me up! I have to get back there, we have to go get him! Don't just sit there, let me up! Let. Me. Up!"

Kat looks at me and I frown, not sure what he wants me to do. His eyes are looking into mine, holding me there like he did back on the firing step with Vanmere. I understand then, and look back at Shiod. His eyes are still wide, still mad with the fever I'd seen take him on the step despite the kolto.

I take his uninjured hand and grasp it tightly in both of mine. "Hey," I say in a voice we used to use as kids. It's a hushed, conspiratorial tone. Some used that tone to keep information away from others, to trade secrets or gossip. We did too, but of a different sort. We used it to talk about unspeakable things. Shiod would speak of his parents and the fighting, the beatings at home and I would speak of Eris. I use it now to speak of Vanmere.

I tell him what I couldn't say in my datapad. I tell him that Vanmere is dead, that Jophrey Vanmere was killed by shrapnel in No Man's Land. How there was nothing we could have done, how the gas was everywhere and the darkness was so very complete. I tell him that he was our friend and we must remember him. I tell him that one of us must make it home to tell his mother, to tell everyone what happened to us.

When I finish, I realize that I believe, truly believe, that I am not coming home. Another attack is coming and this time it will get me. A soldier can not outlive a thousand chances. I will not be as stupid this time, but when we go over the top the bolts will not find someone else. They will find me.

"Promise me you'll go back and tell them," I say. Tears streak Shiod's cheeks and his teeth are chattering. I'm shouting it now. "Promise! Say it for all that we mean to you, damn it!"

"I promise!" Shiod shrieks and then I'm embracing him and Kat is there as well. This unspeakable thing that we have lived through will have no other ears to whisper them to. Shiod will be its sole carrier, our eulogy when the end comes.

After, when we leave Shiod behind and make our way back toward the line, I resist the urge to think of home. Kat is looking at me and I know he sees the resignation in it. Still, he says nothing and we walk on through the communications trench. We pass by men and women on medical pallets, blood pooling and dripping. Some of them are already dead, others still clinging to a half-life of delirium and hope.

Our guns open up, creating a cacophony of sound so loud it shakes the ground we walk on and the walls that pen us in. Kat and I have to stop in a dugout to keep from falling over.

"What's going on?" Kat asks a sergeant, the only man in the dugout. He's older, a lined and bearded face half hidden behind his helmet and mask. He shrugs his shoulders.

"Does it matter?"

"No," Kat says and we wait it out with this old man. Boom. Boom. _Boom._ The cannons are so loud I hear them in my head even after the shots fire. They go off every second, all down the line in unison. I have never heard such a roar.

I remember the fear I'd had when I first arrived and that first shell struck the shielding of Verdin Palace. It seems like such a small thing now, that single shocking moment when compared to this barrage. In a small way, I feel sorry for the imperials in their trenches. The barrage I had lived through the night before was as bad or worse, but I don't think I'd wish it even on my enemy.

Finally, it ends and Kat and I leave the dugout. The barrage had gone on for only a few minutes and when Kat questions a communications man, we learn that Renzler spotted a squadron of walkers during his raid.

"Do you think that got them?" I ask.

"We'll find out," Kat says and snatches a loaf of bread from a passing supply drone. We split it with a spread of jam he's saved from the raid on the imperial trench. We are back on the firing line now and waiting.

"Do you remember the way Joph wrote those poems?" Kat asks, his mouth full of bread. He has a grin that lifts only one side of his face. We speak of him now with his first name. I wonder if this is perhaps the first time. In death, I think of Jophrey, not Vanmere. I sniff and nod.

"Yeah, they would never rhyme right because half the words were made up."

"You used to correct the words for him."

"Only when he wasn't looking," I say and bite into the crusty bread. It's still warm inside and the cold jam seems almost a sin.

"He never could see when he was doing something wrong." Kat says this while looking toward the top of the trench. My gaze follows his and I see him, crawling in the mud.

"No," I agree and wipe tears from the corner of my eyes with the palm of my hand. His words echo in my head. Mama. Mama. Mama. Oh, Joph, why did we ever come here?

I motion to Kat.

"Give me the datapad," I say. "There's still time."

**7. New Recruits**

New recruits have come to us. It is both a relieving sight and a somber one for we have suffered heavily and taken many losses, but these new troops are mostly boys and old men. The boys are a just versions of me from less than a day ago. Each one could be a Jophrey Vanmere as well, scared and ignorant of what will come.

I feel instantly for them because they are such a sorry sight. Their uniforms don't fit and most of the armor is shoddy. Not a single one has a helmet and I only count a score of gas masks among them.

It is worse with the old men. The boys that come up to the front now are full of fear, but it's because they hope to live. The old men that come have no hope. They have volunteered so that others did not have to. I'd seen it many times before I volunteered, these fathers and grandfathers shouldering their packs and heading to the front. They shuffle by me and their looks are neither grim nor fearful, but resigned. They sit on muddy shelves and wait.

Not all is grim, Kat points out that with new recruits comes fresh food. In short order it arrives in the form of cold bread and colder soup. Still I wolf it down without thought or ceremony, careful not to spill a drop.

"We should take some to Shiod," I say. "He'll be hungry."

"He's always hungry," Kat says and we share a grin. It is then that I am aware of someone standing over me. When I look up I'm surprised to see a boy just a little younger than me. I recognize him instantly and frown.

"Hey Tomi, Stevron," Worm says and sits down without asking. He fidgets with his weapon, a rifle too big for his skinny little frame. His armored jacket is too big and hangs loosely, like sagging flesh on old bones.

"What are you doing here?" Kat asks, his eyes narrowing. I've taken a bit of my bread and broken off a piece to share with him. He eats it without a thank you and his hands shake as he holds it to his mouth.

"Why are you here?" I ask, repeating Kat's question. "You're not old enough to volunteer."

Worm is just sixteen, two grades lower than we are in school. No matter what went on there, he found a way to try and join us. We've never been friends yet there he was. I feel suddenly angry that he's followed me even here, to this hell I share with Kat and Shiod and Len. He's come to share what shouldn't be shared, thinking that if we are doing it, it's worth doing.

"I lied," is all he says and stuffs another bite of bread into his mouth. Kat and I exchange a look before I tilt my soup container back and drink it down. My stomach gurgles for more but there's not enough left to spare. I tear off another hunk of bread and give it to Worm.

I recognize other faces as they take their place on the line. I see Ritvin Kirney, my old Basic teacher standing an old blaster rifle and armor too small for his bulky frame. There is Tidelor with his thick framed glasses and impossibly thick beard. Further down I even spot Shorlen, a boy who used to put me up against the wall and take my credits before athletics.

Our past is meaningless. Even Worm bothers me little as I stand and take the rest of my bread to Shiod. They are noise, blades of grass in this great field of reaping I've come to know as intimately as a lover. The mud and dirt of the trenches pass as easily through my fingertips as Eris's hair and I touch the durasteel as softly as I might her cheek. I found solace in her arms as a schoolboy and I find solace in the earth's embrace now.

Shiod is happy for the bread and we talk a while. Worm joins us but Kat makes himself scarce. Our newest companion chatters on annoyingly until Shiod tells him that he is tired and must rest. I glare at him with humor and leave with Worm in tow.

On our way back to the firing line, Worm asks an impossible number of questions, foremost being where he can go to the bathroom. It is a practice I've hardly had the need for and pass him off to a sergeant who looks like he needs something to do. I walk away wondering when I've developed such a casualness toward rank. It is the front, I am sure. The front dissolves us all into men and animals and worse.

I find Kat in a dugout smoking with two other boys I don't recognize. I come in and sit with them. Shortly we play pazaak and I win two fistfuls of smoke-sticks for my trouble. The boy we call Pox due to his pock-marked face, tells me I must be a cheat but congratulates me as he leaves. The other is a short, dour youth who says nothing and simply stares at the wall.

"If the attack comes we'll knock him senseless," Kat says, indicating the door. I frown and ask him what he means. "Worm you damned fool. He's too stupid to be up here. He'll be killed in a second."

Neither of us want this of course. No matter how annoying he is, Worm shouldn't die by shell fire or blaster fire or any other kind of fire. He should grow up and become an annoying man with a wife and annoying children. Otherwise what is the point?

"Do you think Shiod will really go?" I ask, half-hopeful of the answer. I don't know why this has become an obsessive thought but I can do nothing to dissuade it. Shiod must live. He must get home and tell everyone about us. Vainly, I think he must tell Vanmere's mother than I didn't kill him.

"Who's to say?" Kat shrugs. "They could load him onto the transport that brought the fresh blood up."

"Those are one-way," I say and we go silent. The words fill my ears and spill into my heart with unease. I hope they aren't true, after all.

A gunnery sergeant arrives and asks for me. I stand and go with him to the firing line and my little sniper hole. "Southwest, forty-five degrees," he says. I look where he indicates and frown. "Mortars," I say, sighting down my scope.

"Are they trained on our position?"

I look but find no way of knowing for sure. I shrug. "I don't know sergeant."

"Pick off any crews that come to man it, I'm alerting the Captain."

"What's up?" Kat asks a moment after the sergeant has gone.

"Mortars setting up along the line by the forest," I say, nodding toward the area we'd been gassed the night before. "He wants me to pick off any crews I find."

Kat hisses through his teeth and tosses his smoke-stick into the muck. "Damn them. Half a day to go."

"If the Republic comes," I say and sight back down my scope. The mortars are going up systematically from below the trenches. I can't find a single target to sight in on.

"They'll come," Kat says.

For almost an hour I watch the weapons come into being. The only enemies I see through my scope are construction droids that are impervious to my shots. I avoid even attempting a shot at their servos in case another sniper is watching for me. I've heard of sniper duels in books and holovids. One simply needs to make the first mistake to die.

I finally concede that there is nothing I can do and sit back with Kat. Worm joins us soon enough but says nothing. We are grateful for his silence.

Somewhere down the line an explosion is heard. Worm jumps up and grabs his rifle, hurrying to the firing step. Kat waves him down, for we do not move. Explosions are commonplace to us now, as familiar as a school bell.

"What was it?" Worm asks, scratching at his neck. Kat glances down the line and shakes his head. Medics pass us soon after, pushing a grav-sled covered with a bloody sheet. Despite Kat's look I stop to look. Pox stares up at me with half a face and a neck that still spurts blood.

Numbly, I put the sheet back in place as Worm vomits up his meager meal. I shake my head and sit back down at my sniper hole, but don't look out. The whole thing seems so pointless. We are simply waiting now.

"That was our own battery," Kat says at last. "The barrels are too worn, they're landing in our trenches now."

A part of me knew that's what he would say. For Worm it's almost too much. He begins to shake and pray so loudly that it irritates me.

"Shut up," I say. "They'll hear us."

I look down my scope again and see movement this time. A squad of dark armored troopers are moving into place. I quickly tell Kat and he pulls a signaling device from his belt and blows it.

I level my sights on a trooper that ducks behind the mortar across from me. He is doing something to the back of it, programming perhaps. I exhale slowly and draw in a small breath, then hold it. My body goes still, steady as stone and duracrete. My finger tightens on the trigger.

During the attack I killed with my bare hands, but I was out of my mind then. I was not Tomi Adken, eighteen years old with mind for lines and geometry. In those moments I'd been a soldier, frenzied and bloodied. Now I am calm and collected and when the bolt strikes the imperial trooper in the forehead, I know I am a murderer.

I go far away. In my mind I am on Eris's back porch with her head in my lap. I'm stroking her hair, listening to her voice, kissing her lips. I'm feeling the softness of her against me and the love I miss so much.

In reality, I move quickly, shifting my sight from mortar to mortar. My breathing is in time with my shots. Exhale. Short inhale and hold. Fire. Shift. Exhale. On and on. In moments I've killed five troopers before they can erect a cover screen.

"Incoming!" Kat yells and I pull my rifle from its sniper hole and shove myself against the trench wall. Kat pushes Worm against me and I hold him there, though the boy struggles and cries out. "What is happening? What is happening?"

The shells fall. First they fall before us, their echo heard only milliseconds before the blast shakes the ground. Dirt and mud and broken stone rain down on us. I undo Worm's jacket and pull it over his head to protect it from the falling debris.

Razer wire and pieces of proxy mine fall like hail into our trench. The bombardment thickens, striking the parapet in front of our trenches. There is a direct hit and I hear men scream. The earth erupts. It shifts and shakes us, roaring in our ears. Darkness engulfs us as earth and human remains rise up like a great wave and crash down on us.

I dig myself out and find Worm and Kat doing the same. Worm is screaming for help, that he is wounded but I see nothing. Further down the line I see my old Basic teacher wandering toward us. The trench between our positions has been blown apart and only half a meter remains. One of his arms is missing at the elbow. He steps into the open area and turns, simply staring across the void and toward the enemy lines.

I make no move to help him, to shout a warning. Is this not a mercy? Do I do him a favor by letting his ignorance and shell shock bring him a peaceful end? Worm is crying out and I reach my arms around him, hold him to me. When the inevitable happens, and a second shell finds the man known as Ritvin Kirney, he turns and weeps against my chest.

The barrage lifts behind us and I am next to Kat with my rifle. I leave Worm where he curls up at my feet. The attack has come and we begin with the grenades.

We throw into the midsts of the poor devils who run at us so stupidly. They are all defenseless against the explosions that tear at their flesh, can do nothing to save themselves from the torrent of blaster fire. That is all the sympathy I have however, for their numbers soon push into the opening their barrage has given them.

It does not quite come to hand-to-hand combat. We throw grenades and fire like mad men into the hole where Ritvin Kirney had died. Imperial troops pour through it like rats fleeing from water. We fire and fire and fire. We retreat and throw bombs, hook up with other units that are more numerous and more organized.

In time the attack is thrown back. Our batteries opening up on them as they flee across No Man's Land. This time we do not chase them but lay exhausted against what remains of our trench walls. Soon, perhaps only twenty minutes after it began, I am standing next to my sniper hole again.

Worm lay in the mud, his knees drawn up to his chest and his arms wrapped around them. At first I think he's gone into shock but when I shake him, I know. Kat lifts him like the child he is and we give him to the medics as they come by.

"How did it happen?" they ask us.

"Gut shot, must have happened in the attack," says Kat. He is shaking his head. We share a look and I nod, agreeing. We failed to keep him alive. He was only sixteen years old, what did he know of shell fire and trench raids?

"We should tell Len," I say to Kat and we stop the medics again. "If its all the same, we have a favor to ask. We have a friend at the medic station who will like to know."

The two medics exchange a look and then regard me with an expression I do not like. "What is it?" I ask, but something forms in my stomach and clutches at my heart. No. No not this. No, surely not this.

"Sorry guy," the one medic says. "The station was hit in the bombardment. There's nothing left."

**8. In Memoriam**

The wind blows cold from the east, carrying with it the scent of freshly turned earth and blood. It unsettles my hair but its caress is soft enough to make me close my eyes. I can not reconcile the things I see with reality and I shut them out. Darkness is much easier to understand than this.

I stand there for an eternity. The whole of Balmorra moves on without me. The war ends, life begins again, the Republic and Empire collapses. These images are more real to me than the present and I surrender to it.

Exhaustion creeps in at the corners of my mind, reaching out with greedy fingers and tempting whispers. To sleep, to dream, these things will erase this reality. In my dreams Vanmere is alive, Shiod is still laughing and Lenmerer still pines for his latest lost love.

"Tom."

Kat's voice touches me, infiltrates my denial and gently sweeps away delusion. I do not fight this force that tugs me back to myself, I can not. Kat is the only thing I have left besides the war and my memories. He is real, as real as the dirt and mud and blood.

I open my eyes and stare with growing despair at the remains of the Medical Station. The tents are gone and only scraps of fabric tell of their passing. They flutter in the wind, swirling up from the mud like ash in a fire. Here and there bits of durasteel show where cots or medical tables once stood. I see a plasma tube resting in the mud, unbroken and unchanged. I pick it up and wonder if this had been meant for Shiod.

Kat is picking his way through the remains of the tent where Shiod had stayed. He lifts up shattered boxes, turns over scraps of metal or fabric with his boot. He reaches down and wipes a finger across something. It comes up smeared with blood.

I shift my gaze away from him to the walls of the trench. There I see scraps of uniforms and what once had been men. I force myself to look, to examine and search but none of them are recognizable. I could no sooner tell if Shiod is among them than a complete stranger might.

"Tom," Kat says again and comes to me. He shows me the twisted, half-destroyed helmet of an imperial soldier. I realize this must have belonged to the girl Lenmerer cared for. I look away and turn, I can stand no more.

Others come, sifting and searching with looks on their faces that Kat and I must share. They are grim and numbed, lost in the realization that they come here only because they feel they must. There is nothing to find and soon, Kat and I walk away.

We say nothing on our way back to the front. The sun is passing behind a western mountain range and long shadows turn into twilight. Stars wink into being above us, glistening like a thousand eyes. I ignore them as their spying on us is perverse. I instead hope for cloud cover to erase them.

On the line, men are hard at work filling in the destroyed trench wall. We fall in with them and I work off my exhaustion and irritation with mindless labor. With spade and hands I throw dirt and broken duracrete into the hole still wet with the attack's victims.

I reach down and pull up a pair of spectacles from the mud. They are broken, the plasteel bent and the glass shattered. For a moment I consider pocketing them, returning them to my old teacher's classroom where they belong, but instead toss them into No Man's Land to be buried with him.

The enemy sends star shells into the air but no attack comes. They simply try and scare us, but even I am beyond caring. I am an old man, aged fifty years in less than a day. Had I really been a boy just the other day? Had I truly imagined myself a writer, moving to Coruscant and making a name among the great libraries?

For others, this war will pass them by. They will recover from it and go back to lives they had led before it. For us, the youth who came here with no past and only hopes of a future, there is nothing to return to. We have come when our parents are the only hold on life we have. Even love is fleeting and new to us. The first shell fired exploded in our hearts. We are the lost, for even if we survive this war, we have been destroyed by it.

The Lieutenant calls the whole lot of us together. We stand together, eighty-five haggard and starving men in ill-fitting armor. Most of us have not slept since the previous day, some longer.

The officer nods and moves his lips together without speaking for a moment. Then he clears his throat. "Those mortar batteries need to be taken out. I've procured a number of detonators to do the job, but I need volunteers. Four will do."

For a moment, no one says anything. We do not even look at one another. Surely, someone else will volunteer. Someone else will feel the need, the drive to take on such a mission, but no one does.

"Did they hit the medic station, Sir?" I ask.

"Yes," the Lieutenant answers, his eyes questioning me. I answer him by stepping forward. Kat follows suit and I nod to him. We have a silent conversation with our eyes. We are in this together we say, until the end.

After nearly a minute of deliberation we have two more volunteers. One is an old man with only patches of gray hair left above his ears. His hooked nose and jutting chin gives his visage a pruned look. The other is a new recruit, emboldened by Kat and I. He must be no older than eighteen. No older than I was.

We are given the detonators, two each and shown how to use them. They are a simple set-and-trigger affair. There is no timer, so we must set them off manually from a distance. Two for each mortar should do the trick and again I wish Shiod is here. He knows so much more about electronics and devices and machines. More than that, I simply wish he is here because we always did things together. Now I must go with Kat alone.

Where my old sniper hole had been we prepare to go over the top. Kat, the old man we now know as Umley, and I show the youth how to smear his face with mud and dirt to mask the shine of his skin. Kat showed me this in the first quiet moments we had after that first attack and I hope this boy uses it well.

Kat indicates he will go first. He holds up a hand for us to wait until the next star shell goes up. His mouth moves, counting, until the sky goes dark and he goes up and over. I follow, scrambling up and then rolling over the parapet to lay flat on my stomach.

The others wait and once again we lay flat in the darkness behind a mound of upturned earth and wait for the next star shell. For a long time it does not come. Kat looks to me in the darkness and the question is there. Do we bring them up? Do we risk another star shell?

The others do not wait for us to call them, they scramble over the top just as the next star shell explodes in the sky. First over is Umley, but he is a veteran and halts half-way and holds still. The younger panics and I wave for him to go back, to get down but he is too young, too fresh, he does not know about the snipers, about the hidden dangers that a star shell will unveil.

At the top of the trench he hesitates but he is in a crouch and moves, too frantic. He darts first this way and then that before spotting us and running. It is such a short distance, surely he can make it, surely he will be spared!

The inevitable happens, for fate can only go one way here. A sniper shot takes him in the eye and he slides, first to his knees and then onto his face just a meter from us. Umley joins us as the star shell winks out. Quickly we pull the explosives from the dead boy and move back into cover. We spare only a moment to look at him before Kat motions us on.

We move like silent ghosts, like shadows, like hidden devils between shell holes and rock mounds. I am a veteran of one day but already I know cover by sight. I would recognize a suitable half-meter of piled earth a kilometer away. I sense rather than see it, feel it with my eyes, with my urgent heart as a lover might know his partner's face or scent. I reach out for with warm, open arms and embrace it. This cover, this life-saving barrier is my mother, welcoming me after each mad dash.

Presently we reach a trough in No Man's Land, created by one of Renzler's downed enemies. Further down we can see the faint outline of the interceptor's wreckage. We crawl on hands and knees toward it, safe from any sniper's line of sight even as more star shells go up.

"What are they looking for?" Kat whispers, his voice hard and certain. "Calicoids?" I shake my head. The insect hunters have been driven from this place, slaughtered to extinction for a hundred kilometers. No, they are looking for us, they must be. The game must be up, we are exposed, given over.

To answer us, a barrage begins. It lands to our rear with such ferocity that we are blown forward several meters. Kat crashes into a bent piece of wing and Umley lands on my back. The wind is driven from me and I struggle to find it as the earth roils and vibrates beneath us. The attack is everywhere and so thick I can't tell one shot from the next. For once I am happy to be in No Man's Land and out of the trenches. Back there, Hell has opened up again.

The barrage falls further back and it's time for us to move. Now if we wish to accomplish our task, now while the enemy is focused elsewhere. Kat pulls his spade and I take out my knife. Umley holds something in both hands like a gravball, perhaps a grenade. I show him my knife and hold my finger to my lips. We must be silent, but what's the use in all this noise?

Kat holds out a hand, holding us and then, without any noticeable difference in the attack behind us, waves us forward. I roll out of the trough and run in a crouch behind Kat. I don't know if Umley is following but it doesn't matter, not now. This is the vital time and I think of nothing else but the mortars. They must be destroyed, they killed Shiod and Lenmerer. They killed my friends. They are my enemy.

The savageness takes hold of me as we reach a forward gun post. There are three imperial soldiers there with sniper rifles. We dive in and I hack off one man's hand with my knife before driving it up under his helmet. The barrage masks his screams or gurgles though I would hardly notice if it hadn't. Kat is smashing in the faceplate of another with his spade. Umley breaks the third's throat open with a rock he carries in both hands. I rifle through the dead man's pouches and take his energy cells and food pellets.

We are moving again, leaving the three dead men behind with no one the wiser. Just ahead we make out the belching fire of the mortars. Kat brings me close and holds up two fingers. I will take the first two with Umley. I nod and we split up.

The mortars fire every other second. I count them off. One, skip, two, skip, three, skip. On four I move as fast as I can go. I leap over razor wire I spot at the last moment but I hear Umley trip and land hard in the mud. I hesitate and lose my advantage and quickly dive for cover.

Five, skip. Six, skip. I reach out and grab Umley's arm. I feel wet, hot blood but pull him to me. The old man has caught the wire on the forearms and hands. Quickly I dig out a kolto patch and wrap it around what wounds I can find. He grabs my hand and then takes out an explosive, nods, and prepares to go again.

Eleven, skip. Twelve. We are up and this time, the razor wire is thin and sparse. Umley spots a trooper emerging from a sniper hole and leaps into him, knees against the trooper's chest. I'm running toward the mortars now, heedless of their fire and the exposure their muzzle flashes give off.

There are two operators and slam into the first, knifing him in the chest twice before he can react. The second stumbles and falls, struggling to pull his blaster pistol. I slash him across the face, pull his blaster from his hand and shoot him with it.

Turning, I slap the explosives into place before looking to the second emplacement. The second mortar is alerted to us and I am forced to take cover behind the first mortar's supports. I fire with the dead man's blaster but their return fire pins me to the spot. There's no hope of continuing that way and I begin to inch away, to go around the back of the mortar in hopes of surprising them.

Umley surprises them instead. The blaster fire ends and I look to see him standing over the dead operators with his rock. Exhaustion and panic nearly overwhelm me at the sight him standing over their bodies like some dark thing, a spirit of vengeance or death. Then he plants the explosives and I snap out of it.

We rush to the third, where Kat is struggling with one man on the ground. I kick the operator in the face and he cries out before Kat is able to bring his spade down. The charges are set quickly and we hurry away as the bombardment continues along our line.

Through the razor wire and wet shell holes we scramble back toward our own trenches. The star shells are going up again and we are forced to hide behind the interceptor's wreckage once again before crawling away. Umley is slowing and by the time we reach the remains of our own defenses, Kat and I are dragging him.

"Hold!" comes a voice from ahead of us. "Identify!"

Kat growls and snatches my detonator, then triggers them. Behind us, our own barrage takes place. The mortars go up in slag and fire, igniting their whole line as the plasma splashes and burns. Cheers erupt down our own line and Kat flings the detonator's at the voice.

"There's our bloody identification you fool!"

"Kat?"

I freeze for the voice is familiar. No, no it can't be. No I am hearing the dead, they rise up and speak to me. We never made it back from our foray, we have died and this voice is calling me beyond death.

"This better not be a joke or I'll kill you again," Kat says and hauls us with him, one hand on my arm and the other helping me drag Umley. We drop over the trench wall and lower Umley to the firing step. His eyes have closed but he still breathes.

And standing there, looking like he's just stolen our professor's answer book, is Shiod.

**9. For Love**

Shiod is alive. I stand, bewildered, overwhelmed and angry at the same time. He is alive and not once did he tell us! He didn't come and let neither Kat nor I know about it. He let us linger on in a world without him. I went over the top without him, carried out a mission in the dark without him. Would I have done it if I'd known he was alive? For a mad moment, I imagine the Lieutenant keeping this information from me so I would volunteer.

It is sheer madness and like my anger, evaporates beneath the grinning face before me. We say nothing but simply embrace. His strength is nearly back, I can feel it in his arms. There is the smell of earth and sickness about him, but otherwise he seems hale and healthy. It is only when Kat takes his turn, lifting Shiod bodily off the ground in a bear hug so massive that Shiod protests, that I find my voice.

"How?" I ask. It is enough of a question. Kat puts him down gently and steps back, crossing his arms. We both pin Shiod with our eyes, forcing him to pay attention, to answer us.

"Len," Shiod says, though his voice is quiet. He takes a step closer to us and shakes his head. "Not here, there are-"

Shiod is interrupted by our Lieutenant. He arrives out of a dugout and grins. He hands Kat and I a smoke-stick and we both light them. I have scores of the things but it seems rude to refuse.

"By the stars, I can't believe it. I simply can't believe it. Katzin, you never cease to amaze me and you," he says, looking at me. "A raw recruit? It's like you came to us from Special Forces. So quick, and during a bombardment no less?"

A raw recruit. The very idea of it strikes me like the concussion of a shell. I am a raw recruit to this lieutenant yet to the boy who lies dead in No Man's Land, I was an old veteran to be trusted. My thoughts grow grim, remembering him. I hadn't even turned him over so his face wouldn't be in the mud. No, I am no raw recruit. Twenty-four hours has been long enough to forge me into something more.

"Shame about the kid," Kat says, echoing my thoughts.

"Yes, regrettable," the lieutenant says, shrugging broad shoulders with their bulky white armor. "But the mission was a success. The mortars are gone and the bombardment is done. We should get a few hours reprieve I'd think."

He puts a black gloved hand on my shoulder. "Adken right? The marksman?"

"Yes," I say. "Tomi Adken, Sir."

"And Stevron Katzin," our superior goes on. "I'll put you both in for a commendation right away. Superb work." And then, without any more pomp, he leaves us. Kat snorts and spits into the mud. "I'd prefer fresh bread to a commendation."

I don't speak aloud the wish I have. I would give anything for Vanmere to still be alive, for us to be back home where we belonged. Even as I wish it, I know it's wrong. There is nothing back there for me. I wonder if there ever will be, again.

We turn back to Shiod, who is stuffing a bit of bread into his mouth. I don't ask about it, Shiod is never full. He eats like a man condemned to death. I can't blame him. We are all condemned men here, but I shove the thought away. This is no time for solemn thoughts.

He glances up at us, sucking on each of his fingers to be sure there are no crumbs missed. I make note of his missing fingers, though it does not seem to phase Shiod any longer. One must not waste food here, though supplies are still getting through, you never know when you'll get to eat next.

"You shouldn't stuff yourself like that," Kat says. "In case you're shot in the stomach. It's worse then, if you eat."

Shiod waves him off. "We're more like to be blown to bits. Come off it. C'mon." He turns and hobbles away and we quickly follow. Shiod has a pronounced limp now, dragging the right leg while the left shoves itself stiffly down and up again. He will never run the track again, I can see that.

A medic passes us and begins to say something, but Shiod makes a rude gesture with his maimed hand. The sight is comical even as it is grotesque, so we laugh. Shiod flashes us a shining smile. His spirits are high, despite it all.

We duck into a dugout that is still whole and Shiod shoves the simple wooden door shut, giving it a good kick with his hurt leg to make sure it's tight. Kat cautions him not to strain himself.

"I'm so hyped up on a Kolto, I could have a fireblossom go off in my pants and I wouldn't feel a thing." Shiod shoots us both a grin and leans against the dugout wall, then thinks better of it and sits down. At once he seems exhausted, his smile shrinking, his face melting into a tired grimace.

"Say, pass me a smoke-stick will you? Thanks," he says as I hand him one. He lights it and we all sit together, the dugout slowly filling with hot, dense smoke. We don't speak, but let him tell us what we want to know in his own time. There is no rush. If an attack comes, we will know and if a bombardment comes, we are already in a good place to wait it out.

After several moments he does speak. His voice is low and solemn and through the gloom, he looks so much older, sicker, wounded. "It was the girl," he says, waving his smoke-stick toward the door. "That's why we weren't in the tent."

"The girl," Kat says. "The imperial?"

"Yes," Shiod says and spits. "That one."

Kat frowns and leans back, crossing his arms. I see his brows knit together in thought and I look between them. "I don't understand," I say. "What about her?"

"It's mad," Shiod says. "Bloody, garking mad. Len... Gods, you know how Len is, thinking every girl he helps is his destined, well, whatever. You know?"

I do know. Lenmerer has been chasing dreams since the moment I first knew him. His mind is always full of fancy stories, romantic meetings among the stars full of danger and intrigue. He always told me that he'd meet the love of his life in the most clandestine way. Suddenly, my heart seizes and my breath catches.

"He didn't, he..." I see Shiod raise his eyes and then shut them, shaking his head. I know. Oh for the love of the Gods of Balmorra, I know. Len followed his heart and it betrayed him again. Shiod's next words are so expected I could have recited them with him.

"He helped her escape."

We sit in silence for so long that the dugout becomes intolerably hot and hard to breath. The smoke is thick and Kat opens the door to let some of it out. We move to the floor, sitting or laying in a tight circle to escape it.

"During the attack?" Kat asks, finally. His voice is a whisper, his eyes on the mud at his feet. Shiod nods from where he lays on the dirt floor, staring up at the swirling smoke. "During the attack," he says.

"How?" I ask. I have to hear it, have to find out just how stupid he had been. Perhaps we'll find a way to cover for him, to hide it so no one will know. To do what he did is treason and in this environment, here in the front lines... Oh, Len. Why? What did you think would happen?

"When the bombardment began to hit behind the lines, we were instructed to get up, to start moving. Len gave me a good dose of Kolto so I could stand up and we tried to help others. It was pretty confused, chaotic, you know? In the middle of it I found him staring at her. She's tied to her cot and just staring back. She had this look on her face, I can't explain it. It was... sad. I guess? Sad is the only thing I can think of."

"Imminent death is like that," Kat says, nodding and scratching at his neck. "Makes you upset."

"No, it wasn't like that. You know I hate to say it, because we all know Len, but I think she loved him. It was just this look that said, 'Don't do what you're thinking.' You know? Gods," Shiod shook his head and took another draw on his smoke-stick. "It could have been a holovid."

Kat swears and I wince, knowing that is the kind of situation that would do Lenmerer in. "So what did you do, you damned fool?" Kat asks, glaring at Shiod who only shrugs. "I told him not to do it. To grab her and move her with the others, but what could I do? I could barely move much less fight the idiot."

"So what did happen?" I ask, though I wasn't sure I wanted to know. Shiod struggles, sits up and stabs his smoke-stick into the ground. "He pulled his pistol and aimed it at me."

"What?" I nearly shout it, disbelieving. Doing something stupid in the name of love was something Lenmerer would surely do but threaten a friend? That seemed beyond him. Even Kat looked incredulous. "I don't believe it."

Shiod grunted. "Believe it. He aims it at me and says, 'Help me. When the attack comes, she can get back with them.' I asked him who he was talking to but he only waves the gun at me. 'You,' he says, 'This is so you can say I coerced you.'"

"The damned, bloody, idiotic, noble fool," Kat spits and throws away his smoke-stick as well, then lights a seconds. No one interrupts. Kat isn't quite done and both Shiod and I know it. He stands up, paces and then runs a hand over his dirty, mud-splattered face.

"He could have just unlocked her bindings and walked away, no one would have thought twice. He could have marched her toward the rear, she'd have been safe. We don't kill prisoners. Gods damn him!"

Shiod pulls another piece of breads from a pocket and chews on it. "He could have, but she wouldn't have gone. They spoke, I didn't hear it, but they said something to one another. Then we're moving along the communications trenches. We hid in a dugout until the bombardment got thickest."

"Why did he need your help?" I ask, frowning.

"Took us both to help her through some of the messier parts of that trench. She was pretty banged up. No attack came, as you two saw first hand. So we got her to that hole in the line and she scrambled through it."

"Right up to the line," Kat says, shaking his head. "Did anyone see you?"

Shiod shrugs. "Right then? I didn't think so. I was surprised you two didn't see her but then again, you all went ahead and had a party without me."

"Where is he now?" Kat asks, ignoring the chiding remark and fixing Shiod with a stare. He slumps under the gaze and doesn't look at either of us.

"Right before you guys got back they took him. I don't know who they were, lieutenants or something. They were going to take me too but Len told them he'd made me do it. He kept screaming that and they took him... I never said a thing. Not a word... I didn't... I didn't even..."

At this, he breaks off and puts his forehead on his knees. "Gods. I didn't say anything. I didn't help."

Kat takes a long draw on his smoke-stick, exhales the smoke and throws it away. "Nothing you could have done." He walks over to Shiod and puts a hand on his shoulder, then lifts him to his feet. I stand then too as Kat opens the door.

"Let's go see what's what," Kat says and we head out into the night.

We learn that Lenmerer is being held in the Captain's quarters under guard. We stand by the gate in front of two guards that look at us warily, but step together to block our passage. "State your business with the Captain," the one says.

"We want to see a medic named Lenmerer," Kat says, adopting a tone that suggests boredom and irritation. "We heard he's being kept here."

"Who are you?" the other guard asks.

"Friends," Shiod answers, then narrows his eyes. "The only ones he's got more than likely."

There's a few more moments of confusion while they speak with someone on their comms and then we're allowed in. The Captain sits behind a desk and eyes us as we enter. Len is nowhere to be seen.

"You're his friends," the man says, his voice sounding tired and exasperated. "Came in with him yesterday, right?"

"Not all of us," Kat says, then indicates Shiod and me. "Those two did. I've been on the line for months, Sir."

"I know you. Katzin right?" He rubs his fingers down his mustache and taps a datapad on his desk. "You and Adken blew up the mortars a bit ago. Bravo on that. You have commendations coming to you."

Kat looks irritated but presses on. "We'd rather see Lenmerer, Sir."

The Captain, whose name is Bingsby I recall, leans back in his chair and shakes his head. "Wish I could, Katzin, wish I could. Rules are rules though."

"Rules for what?" I ask, feeling sudden fear rise in my throat. "What's happened?"

Bingsby sighs and leans forward, then fixes me with a stare that is both cold and final. "I've heard the statements. He helped a prisoner escape and I have no choice in the matter. The rules of conflict are clear."

"Just like that?" Kat says. He's angry now and has taken a step toward the Captain. This turns out to be a mistake. Two troopers step in and shove him back. They level their blaster rifles at us and we all hold up our hands. The reaction seems... extreme to me and I shoot Shiod a glance. He is giving me the same one.

Kat isn't finished. "He is due a trial, a court martial. Sir."

"Not in a time of war such as this," the Captain says and stands up. He points a finger at Kat. "The council is all but dissolved. Balmorra hangs by a thread. Our weapon factories are all being used against us and I am the only thing keeping us together. So no, Militiaman Stevron Katzin, he is not due a trial. He has committed treason and I will not stand for it. Now get out of here before I decide the three of you are complicit in his plans!"

We are moved toward the door by the armed men. Shiod cries out Lenmerer's name before he's shoved roughly against the door. Kat smacks the release plate and it opens. "I'm sorry!" Shiod shouts toward the only other door in the room. "Len, I'm sorry!"

And then, without anything further, we are out of the office and heading back toward the firing line. I look back only once at the prefab building. I feel a sinking in my stomach, a tightness in my chest. This war gave me back Shiod but it's taken Len. I know this now, one life traded for another. I could not have both.

The night opens up with star shells as another bombardment begins. In the flashes and explosions that follow, my mind is blanked and only one thing feels certain.

I will never see Rangal Lenmerer again.

**10. If They Lay Us Down To Rest**

The earth heaves under the barrage and throws up gouts of rock and dirt in every possible direction. We run, hunched over like animals. In places we are reduced to rodents, scurrying on hands and knees as the trench is eroded above us. I hear nothing but the booms and cracks of shells. I see nothing but flashes of intense daylight when the star shells explode overhead. In those moments the world is reduced to what is before me. The trench is my world, the mud my home and Shiod and Kat my brothers.

A shell lands behind us. I hear its whistle and scream a moment before impact and fall flat, covering my head. I feel the explosion before I hear it, a deep, angry rumble that turns into a terrible vibration. It tears at me, rips the trench apart on all sides. Mud and dirt and human viscera fall upon me.

I scream, not from fear but from anger and resentment. This is the reality, this shell that lands so randomly, kills so effortlessly. It is the only important thing. Lenmerer will die a traitor because he felt compassion for one girl, one! Yet this shell is sent to us blindly and will kill us for no other reason than the degree of the barrel was good.

I climb through, pushing aside the mud and come across an arm. It is not Shiod's or Kat's and so I continue, shouting for them to follow me. There is a dugout nearby, I remember it. It is deep and reinforced and we will be safe there. Another flash lights up the sky and I see two men ahead of us. They are running toward us! I shout for them to go back, to turn away, to run for a dugout.

They do not heed me, do not hear me. They are young, two boys of the new draft that arrived earlier today. The first is on me and I heave myself up, my shoulder connecting with his hip and he goes down with me ontop of him. Kat grabs the other by the leg and kicks him down. The boy beneath me struggles, screams and I let fly with the flat of my palm against his face. He is reduced to sobbing after only two strikes but it takes Shiod brandishing his knife to quiet the other.

We drag them toward the dugout as the barrage thickens. It is everywhere, exploding both against the ground and in the air, raining down shrapnel. A piece cuts through my upper arm but doesn't do much damage.

A more serious wound opens up on the boy Shiod and Kat are managing. It's ripped right through his shoulder and the blood explodes onto Shiod's face. The boy kicks him off and is at once standing. Kat reaches for him but it's too late. He runs like a madman into the rear, into the thickest of the shelling. We can do nothing more for him.

The dugout appears and it takes all three of us to drag the other recruit into it. He's become hysterical again, kicking, biting, screaming at everything and anyone. "Damn fool!" Kat says and throws him against the wall of the dugout. He gets up, perhaps to run but Kat pulls his blaster and aims it at his head. "Sit down."

He does and some of his sanity returns to him. Others join us, some are wounded and a medic is there. He treats my cut with a kolto bandage and begins working on the others. I don't look at him the whole time, fearing that I will see Len's face. I don't want to think about Len or Vanmere or Eris or any of them. I sit down and stare at the wall.

The barrage goes on for hours. The dugout becomes suffocatingly hot and thick with fear, exhaustion and something close to madness. Claustrophobia sets in and more than once, someone must be restrained from running out into it. I feel the itch myself soon enough. The heat is oppressive, settling on me like a weighted blanket. The stink of unwashed bodies mingles with the smell of fear. More than one man loses control of hiS bowels during the attack but no one says anything. One understands these things now and it is no longer shameful.

Kat perks up and I look at him. "What's up, Kat?"

"That's a whistle," he says and stands. He holds up a hand to forestall any further movement. "Wait." Three more shells explode nearby, cracking the duracrete overhead and dust falls over us like a settling fog. Through it all, Kat stands motionless, listening.

"It's coming," he says and picks up his rifle where he'd stowed it. He looks at all of us in turn, but we can not comprehend. "An attack, move!"

The word 'attack' forces us from stupor. I grab my rifle and go to follow when I see Shiod behind me. The rifle he carries belonged to the recruit who had run off earlier. He glowers at me. "I'm coming," he says and gives me a shove. "Move!"

What makes men brave? What possible thing makes us dive headlong into the slaughter that awaits us? Is it madness? Is it duty? I don't know, may never know. Shiod does not hesitate or flinch due to his injuries. He hobbles along with me, fumbling to insert a fresh clip from a dead man's belt. In that moment, his wounded hand gripping the weapon while he shoves the energy pack into place, Shiod is the bravest man I know.

The firing step is all that remains of our front line trench. It's been blown to bits and craters separate that shallow cover all along the line. We duck down behind the step that until recently only reached my waist. I hope it is enough.

The whistles are more frequent now and down the line I see exchanges of blaster fire. I risk a look over our makeshift cover and in the light of a star shell, I see the enemy coming. Kat and I look at one another, nod and begin to throw what few grenades we have left. Shiod sets up his rifle on the top of the step and opens up. When the last of my grenades are thrown, I pick up my rifle and do the same.

The imperials suffer greatly. To our left, a man with an assault cannon is cutting into what is left of their ranks. Kat and I cover him as best we can, for he is exposed with such a weapon. He must stand to wield it. Still, it is not enough and the man takes half a dozen bolts before he falls.

We ditch our rifles as the imperials come over the last of the wire. Kat wields his spade and I my knife as they come at us. Shiod fires away with his slugthrower but it is soon exhausted.

The first imperial hurls himself at me, intending to smash the butt of his rifle into my skull. I sidestep him and ram my knife in above his hip. There is a groan of pain and he falls to the ground where I finish the job with two downward stabs.

Another reaches me just as I pull my knife out of the first. The weapon smashes into the side of my head and stars explode before my eyes. My legs turn to water and I fall. I try to raise my hands to defend myself but they won't respond. For the moment I am paralyzed.

Shiod appears and wraps an arm around the imperial soldier's throat, hauling him back. The soldier struggles, flailing but Shiod's grip is a vice. In school he'd wrestled well above his weight and he is all arms and legs, pulling the man down. Kat comes to help and ends the soldier's struggles with his spade.

I regain the use of my limbs quickly and we head away from the area to reinforce another position. We pass the dead man with the auto cannon and strip him of his grenades and energy packs. Kat and I throw the grenades as we leap into a shell crater for cover. They land in the midst of another wave, throwing debris and bodies in every direction.

"Where in seven hells is our artillery!" Kat shouts, throwing his last grenade and pulling free his pistol. He's lost his rifle along the way. I managed to keep a hold of mine and take position on the lip of the crater with Shiod. We fire rapidly, and I manage to take down two soldiers in as many shots. The sniper rifle's night lens becomes a precious tool now.

The enemy begins to return fire from a shell hole not far away and I slide back down for cover. Shiod's body convulses and I realize he hasn't taken cover. He'll be shot! I reach out and grab him, pulling him down. "You bloody idiot!"

I stop, the words dying in my throat. Shiod's eyes are open but they aren't looking at anything. Above his eyes, a third one has opened. It is black and charred. For a moment I don't understand, can't understand.

"Snap out of it! Wake up!" I shake him. "Wake up you bloody idiot! Wake up!" His body does not respond. There is no breath in his lungs, no witty comment about to burst from his lips. His eyes do not move, but continue to stare blankly into the sky. "No," I say, my whimper lost in explosions that suddenly open up on the field. Our artillery is firing but it is too late.

"Hey," I say and cradle his body in my arms. "Don't worry about it... you... it's fine..." I lean my head down against his, unable to speak the unspeakable. Then I force his eyelids closed. "It's okay."

"We have to get out of here," Kat says. I nod, upset because there are no tears on my face. I feel numb inside, like all the feeling has been taken from me. Shiod lays still against my chest, his body still warm but the life already gone.

Kat takes my arm and tries to get me up but I pull free. "I can't leave him here!" I shout but the shells are falling dangerously close. I know I can't stay here, can't keep him here. "Help me!" I can not leave him out here like Vanmere. I can not.

Kat takes takes Shiod from me, cradling his body in his arms like a mother might hold a child. I think of Shiod's mother, who always looked away when things got hard. Would she look away now? If I go to her, stand at her door and tell her, will she simply ignore it and refuse to know?

We reach the reserve trenches but I don't remember how. A medic comes to take Shiod but I refuse to leave him. "He's gone," the medic says over and over. I nod perhaps, eventually. Still I go with them to the station where the medic confirms it. He hands me his things, an identity chip and the small pouch of credits and holos he kept on him. He don't look at them, unsure if I will ever look at them. I put them in my pack as they seal up his waterproof burial bag.

The barrage goes on, each side trading endless destruction. I walk and eventually Kat finds me. There is news of Lenmerer and I hear what I must hear. They shot him as a traitor shortly before the command station was obliterated by shell fire.

This war takes everything from us. From Kat it took a sister, a cousin, a father and endless friends. From Vanmere it took his future, for he would have become a brilliant scientist. From Lenmerer it took his innocence, his naivity, his hope. He believed in such things and they shot him for it.

Shiod. His name was Devin Shiod and what it took from him was life. He lived every hour, breathed it in and laughed out the pain and suffering. He ate horrible things and pretended it was a grand feast. He surrounded himself with friends and thought of them as family. His future had mattered little to him, as long as there were friends there.

The unspeakable things will remain unspeakable. One day I will come back and see his mother and his father if they are both alive and I will tell them what they have lost. They will not turn away from their son again.

And me? What has this war taken from me? To say everything is too dramatic and altogether too simple. It took Eris from me in the beginning, the only girl I was so sure I could love. I look out from our shell hole now as the first rays of morning peak through the rock hills and wonder. Love, sensation, it is all numbness. Will such a feeling quicken within me ever again? Can such a feeling survive this horror?

And it has taken Vanmere, Len and Shiod. In the end it took them all. For a brief, glorious moment it gave me back Shiod only to snatch him away again. It takes everything you are and have. That is war, total and complete war. When the fight leaves Balmorra it will consume other planets, destroy more lives.

A shell lands ten meters from my position and I do not duck, do not flinch. I close my eyes and wait for this war to claim me as well. Nothing happens and I sink down, the yellow water swirling with red around my boots at the bottom of the crater.

Kat is beside me. Kat, my only living friend. Kat, my savior and comrade. Stevron Katzin and myself are the only ones left. The numbness grows and settles into my chest, cushions my heart, steals my breath.

"It will be over soon," Kat says absently. He is looking east, at the rising sun. "Another eight hours, if that Jedi was telling the truth."

Eight hours. What is eight more hours? An eternity? A blinking of one's eye? I can't grasp it, can't fathom eight hours. What will happen after? Will the fighting cease? Will we go home? Will the Republic come? It is all too far away. I am certain of only one thing.

Morning has come and I will face this day with Kat alone.

**11. At the Last**

We lay low in the shell holes for there are no proper trenches any longer. The continuous bombardments reduced their depth in some areas to less than a meter. It is enough to lay down and close one's eyes and wait for the next shell to claim him.

Kat and I never stay in one place too long. We move from hole to hole, crawling beneath wire and leaping over pools of gas and blood. The gas came regularly for a time but it is only dangerous in the low places now and we have removed our masks.

The sun is well up and we are clearly seen by the enemy. Snipers shoot at any hints of uniform or helmet and often their bolts find flesh and bone. A sergeant lost his hand when tossed out his smoke stick.

I assume our lack of wounds means we are fast or lucky or both. Kat knows where to go and we are both keen to finding cover now. Presently we rest in the broken bits of an old dugout. Duracrete and mud is piled high on all sides though the trench it once occupied is nothing more than broken mounds of dirt.

We do not smoke and barely talk. When we do it is in hushed whispers and low, guttural sounds. The enemy is listening, watching, waiting. We wait too but I do not know what for.

There are rumors of peace among the pockets of soldiers we come across. Those with comms still functional pick up talk about a Treaty being proposed on Alderaan. Kat chalks it up to nonsense and rumor until we hear that Coruscant is fallen.

Strangely that takes the wind from us, even now as Kat and I sit huddled against a bank of earth that is both our salvation and our prison. Coruscant. Coruscant the capitol of the Republic is fallen. The words sound foreign and awkward in my mind and on my tongue. I can not get the words out, to mouth even a single syllable to Kat. No, no it is not true, it is madness. Without the Capitol, there is no Republic and no relief.

Yet still the bombardment rolls on and on ceaselessly. There is an attack during a lull but even then the shells rain down, killing imperials as well. They are mad and we are mad. The whole world has gone to splinters of sense and reality. A shell, an explosion, a scream and a hole. These are the only things. They are almost holy.

I have lost track of time but the sun is risen over the mountains. Soon, soon our time will end and the Republic will come. It will come, it must. Without it we are all dead men waiting to lay down and rattle out our final breath.

I don't think about Shiod but he comes to me in these moments of silence. I see him sitting across from me, a skinny boy in big boots and a jacket too large for him. He holds a rifle that looks so comical I would laugh if it were any other circumstance. Something is missing from him. It is his smile, his warmth, his life. The image fades and I am alone with Kat again.

Is it madness? Have I broken finally, now at the last? Will I see ghosts the rest of my life? Will I leave here and walk with Shiod's memory wherever I go? I catch myself and am surprised. I am thinking of after, of surviving the war. I shake my head and spit.

"Time to move," Kat says and there is no hesitation. We are up and running as the bombardment begins to come our way. Rock and dirt and bodies are thrown into the air ahead of us, to our right and behind us. We turn to our left and Kat drops to the ground. I am right behind him and narrowly avoid a shell fragment that rips through the air over my head. Had I not dropped the ground it would have decapitated me.

I crawl down into a shallow dugout where Kat is kneeling with others. They have a commlink but can't seem to get any signal. Kat curses.

"The whole damned line is down," he says but the rest is drowned out. The barrage thickens, intensifies to the point where I can no longer hear individual shells. They rain down continually, one after another. The world shakes, unceasingly, uncontrollably. It groans with explosions, screams in pain and agony as it is split open, torn wide, bled of its rock and soil.

Kat drags me out of the dugout and into the open trench. It is safer here. The dugout could collapse under the concussion alone. I hold my head low, my cheek sinking into mud. The dirty water gets into my mouth and nose and I sputter but don't rise. Eventually I find a way to reconcile it, to breath with the left side of my mouth and shut the water out. I am lucky and there is no gas.

It goes on and on until I feel I'll go mad. Hours, days, years pass under that onslaught. I lose track of time, lose track of where I am and what I should do. Yet I don't lose sight of Kat. I reach out and grab hold of his pant leg. I anchor myself here with him, an island in this unending storm.

Kat, I can always count on and without him life here holds little meaning. I do not think of Balmorra, or home, or Erris or the Republic. I think of Kat and the next shell hole he must lead us to. I think of that and nothing more.

And then, quite suddenly, it all falls silent. The shells cease falling. The guns no longer roar and men do not scream but moan and cough. Is it finished? Have they given up?

A shell rips through the air and flies straight overhead. With an enormous, deep thump it strikes the shield of Verdin Palace. For a moment the shield holds, pushing back against the destruction forced upon it. And then it crumbles, collapsing under the sheer power of the attack. The building within is struck and stone flies in every direction.

"Gods," Kat says. We say nothing more. I crawl up to him as another shell punches through the shield and collapses a tall tower. It falls like a cascading waterfall of rock and debris onto the roof of the building below.

Kat is up and drags me after him. We find the dugout, which is still intact and check the commlink. Frantic chatter greets us, and we know the line is back.

"The shield is failing," Kat says into it. "Can anyone hear this?"

"Katzin, is that you?" A man materializes on the commlink. It is the lieutenant from earlier and he is missing his left arm. Another man is seeing to the stump as he motions into the space before him. "Nevermind, I see it is. You did the mortar op, correct?"

"Yes," Kat says, narrowing his eyes.

The lieutenant doesn't seem to notice the lack of title. "Good, Generator Four is damaged and needs its power rerouted. It's a simple job, I'll upload it to this commlink. I need you to go do that or the shield will collapse completely."

"I'm not a technician," Kat says but the lieutenant is already uploading the information. "It's there Katzin, good luck. The generator is west of your current position, assuming this data is correct."

"I know where it is," Kat says but the transmission is already cut. He looks to me and I shoulder my rifle again. We look at the others but they avoid our eyes. It matters little, for we move faster alone.

There are no grenades to be had and so we pack our belts with energy clips and salted reek. I nibble on a strip of the tough meat as we collect these things, sometimes pulling them off the men who in this dugout with us. They do not protest and some do not even look up. The shellshock has gotten to them.

"This should be Shiod's job," Kat mutters as we leave the dugout. I do not trust myself to speak in response. That wound is still too fresh, the ghost of my friend still lingering in every dark corner. I grunt and Kat understands. If Kat grieves, I do not see it. He is a year older and perhaps a year wiser and tougher. Perhaps it is even simpler still. He is too long at the front.

We hurry along what remains of our communications trench, bent low at the waist to avoid sniper bolts. They make zipping noises through the air above our heads and smack into mounds of dirt and bags of rock. Dust blows thick across our passage, white and choking.

At the end of this trench line we wade through brown water that comes up to our knees. Blood frogs swim around us and Kat tosses one away with his spade. A sniper bolt takes it out in mid air. The sight is so ridiculous I nearly laugh despite myself. Instead, I silently compliment the sniper's skill and speed.

Down the line we go, passing young men and old men and every possible age in between. No one stops us and no one offers to help us. There is no 'hey comrade, good to see you're still ticking.' They avoid our eyes. Kat sets his jaw and balls a hand into a fist. His mood confirms my suspicions that this is a suicide mission. Command knows the numbers of snipers over there, how many shells they will soon be lobbing at the shield.

What are two men to them? Numbers, that is all we are. We are numbers on a datapad they will use in the years to come. They will post them for sympathy, build large memorials with our names and say to others, 'Look at how we remember, look at what we did for them.' Men and women and boys and girls will come and touch those names and feel like they've participated, honored us. It is enough to make me sick.

"You all right?" Kat asks, for he's seen my expression. I nod and urge him on. We approach the end of the line where some of the trenches are deep enough to walk. Here men and boys are treated for their wounds. I do not stop to look at the waterproof bags that lay in heaps against the wall.

Kat draws out a pair of macrobinoculars and scans the area beyond. "Enough craters to take shelter in, no shell lands in the same place twice." He hands the device to me and I look, confirming what he's said. Beyond is the generator, squat and box-like and surrounded by blackened and broken duracrete and exploded earth.

Here Kat pauses and frowns. My eyes widen, I feel it coming and we duck down. A barrage opens up everywhere at once. The shells land in every direction, tearing up earth, exploding dugouts, and destroying screaming men. The field ahead of us takes hit after hit, digging out new shell holes for us. They gamble on a stray splinter killing anyone rushing for the shield generator.

Kat takes hold of my arm and holds up three fingers, then two, then one and we go over the top. The air is immediately hot but clear of moisture. The explosions have robbed the place of humidity and filled it with superheated ozone. We leap into the nearest shell hole as four land near the end of the trench.

There is no time to look and again and again we go over the edge, running for the next shell hole and leaping, sliding on chests and knees into them. In the fourth, there is a single, perfectly intact chair sitting squaring in the middle of the crater. The absurdity of it gives me pause but only long enough to realize there is still a pair of bloody legs at the foot of it.

It is only minutes later that we are staring at the generator from only a few meters away. The shells begin to strike the shield directly, bringing down more mortar from the palace. Kat does not hesitate and we rush for the device.

A shell is fired. I hear the report of its gun and detect the buzzing, terrifying whiz of its approach. It comes ever onward, seeking us. I feel its hot breath preceding its arrival and wonder what it will be like to die in a million pieces. Will it be quick or will I feel that moment in its entirety?

There is no escape from it and I run because there is no other thing to do. If I stop it will kill me, or a sniper will. Their bolts are following along behind me with every step, puffing clouds of dust in my wake. I run to my end, and I only hope that it will be swift and I will not suffer long.

The shell hits between us. I watch the silver streak of the light durasteel casing flash before my eyes. Kat and I dive for the ground out of instinct but at this range the concussion will destroy us. I open my eyes and the shell is there, embedded in the mud, whole and steaming.

A dud.

We waste no time to celebrate our providence. Sniper fire increases and we rush to the generator. We take cover behind the duracrete slabs and open the maintenance panels. Kat clicks on the holo with its instructions.

It takes us little time to replace and reroute the power. I know that Shiod could have done it faster, ensured that nothing would disturb the re-work but Kat and I do all we can. It will be enough.

The shield hums again and we hear the shells land and explode against it, but now it holds, now the palace inside is protected. We have done it and we slump down, exhausted and spent. The mad rush back to the trench is still ahead of us, but for just a moment, we do nothing.

A moment passes, perhaps only a heartbeat, but it seems like an eternity. We do not speak or waste it. The sensation of a hard job complete drains me of tension, wipes away my fears. The unexploded shell still lays there in the field, a reminder that we are alive.

"Let's go," Kat says and begins to rise. In doing so he does not see the collapsed bit of duracrete that now exposes him. I notice this in the instant before the words of warning will escape.

The impossible happens and Kat falls.

**12. On Sleepless Roads, The Sleepless Go**

Time slows.

Kat pitches forward. Blood splatters my face. I think I scream his name, cry out in horror and in panic. Shells explode all around me, their fragments tearing up the ground behind me, before me and to either side, yet nothing touches me here, in this haven of duracrete. Only Kat.

I rush to him, scrambling on hands and knees. There is so much blood and so it was a shell and not a sniper. Shrapnel has torn into Kat's neck just below the hairline and above his shoulder blades. I ease him onto his side while I apply a kolto patch. He groans.

"Kat," I say, desperate to believe him well, that this is nothing but a scratch that looks so much worse than it is. I want him to sit up and laugh and tell me its fine, not to worry. He does none of this.

"Can you hear me? Kat, Kat!" I am shouting, even as the shells scream by, their explosions stealing my words. My face is suddenly warm, wet. I reach up, terrified that I am hit but they are only tears.

Our own cannons open up. I feel their vibrations through the ground even before I hear their booms and crashes. Kat's wound stops bleeding, the kolto patch keeping him from losing any more. He stirs enough to open his eyes.

"Kat!" I shout again. "Kat, talk, please!"

"Just at the last," he says, his voice nothing more than a rasping whisper. "Just at the last."

"No Kat, you're going to be okay. Can you stand? We'll get to the medic station. C'mon Kat, come on!"

I pull at his arm, childish in my impatience, in my desire to make everything okay if only we could leave this place. The medics will fix him. He will be saved.

He cries out when I move him and the bandage bursts. Blood runs over my fingers as I try and staunch it again. "Gods," I say, "please." Another patch and the blood stops. This time I wrap the wound with another cloth bandage as well and secure it with a pressure lock.

"My legs," Kat groans. I check them but there seems to be no damage. I tell him I see nothing and he shakes his head. "I can't move. Gods damn it, they won't work!"

I pale. The wound at his neck must have damaged his spine. Getting back to the medics is impossible for him now. "Kat," I say, coming very close to him. "I'll carry you, Kat."

It comes to me that I am saying his name over and over needlessly. I am saying it for myself, perhaps to memorize it, to keep him here with me. I can't allow him to go where I can not follow.

"Too heavy," he says. His face breaks out in a sweat and he winces. I fumble around for a pain killer in my pack but find none. I shake my head and raise him up to sit. "Wrap your arm around my shoulder."

Despite holding firmly onto me, we both topple back into the torn earth as explosions test our balance. Kat cries out in pain and I quickly get him righted again. Time is running out and I must hurry.

It takes me two more tries to get off my knees. Kat is not so heavy, but he is dead weight. I take him up onto my back, supporting his useless legs beneath my arms while his own wrap about my shoulders. Breathing heavily, we lean against the generator for support while the bombardment rages around us.

"We'll have to make a go of it," I say, though the sight of the shells throwing up fountains of dirt unnerves me. How can I make it through such a storm? How might anyone? Yet Kat and I did so just minutes before, but that was Kat showing me where to go. This time, he is not showing me the way.

Suddenly the barrage lessens and lifts and our cannons open up in full. I don't think. I run with all that I have into the field. The weight on my back slows me but adrenaline and need pushes me. I lose any sense of exhaustion, hunger or pain I might have had. Kat needs me and we must run or die.

The enemy guns open up again and I throw myself into the nearest shell hole. We land awkwardly and Kat falls from me, crying out as we roll away from one another. I crash into a single chair and a pair of bloody legs and scream, kicking them away.

Kat's voice brings me back. He calls my name and I open my eyes then find my way to him. He's braced himself against the wall of the crater, looking yellow and sick. "An attack," he says, his voice hoarse and cracking.

I look over the edge and see it coming. Imperial troops rush toward our trenches. Our rifle and automatic fire cuts into them while our cannons destroy entire sections of their line, yet they come. Wave after wave of them run and die. They are desperate, urged on by some invisible timetable. The end is coming and we all feel it.

An explosion hits nearby and a dark cloud of dirt falls over us. I throw myself across Kat's body to shield him from it and when we straight up, my heart sinks. Occupying the shell hole with us is an imperial soldier, their weapon trained on us.

My own weapon is gone, left back at the generator. I did not even think to carry it and Kat both. It seemed so much less important then.

Kat breathes slowly. He looks at me and I look at him in turn. We talk in silence and he places his hand on the handle of his spade. I reach for my knife but the soldier shifts his aim.

We have no time to respond as the attack comes near. Shells land all around us and we duck down, cover ourselves in the vain hope the flying splinters will pass us by. I feel them strike the earth all around me, hear their buzzing, whirring death whisper to me, but none call me to that final rest.

The bombardment begins to lessen and we hear frantic shouting as the imperial troops are driven back. I see them pass through the smoke of the shells.

I grab my knife and sit up, ready to strike. He stands over me, and I let my knife fall. Kat's lost his spade as well and we move away, backing up to the wall of the crater.

Then, he lowers his weapon and reaches up to remove his helmet with his free hand. No, it is not a 'he' at all but a 'her.' The smooth, gray metal uncovers blonde hair and a face I remember from the medical tent. She looks at me and Kat, her eyes no longer full of hate.

It is an eternity that we stare at one another, unsure of what to do and yet so sure that simply being together again is an impossibility that can not be impossible. Unspeakable things hang between us, atrocities accused and forgiven. I see a man that I stab in the mud of our trenches. I hear his gurgles, his screams of please, please no. I look out above the crater walls and see Vanmere crying for his mother with his guts snaking out between bloody fingers.

What inhumanities can be forgiven just because we are told to commit them? What possible reason exists that made any of this sensible? Vanmere, Len and Shiod all died for what? Balmorra? Verdin? The Republic and freedom?

This all passes in a heartbeat. The bombardment increases on all sides. At once it is pandemonium. Men and weapons scream. The earth shakes and bucks. The blonde woman falls to her knees. She screams words at me and for a moment that is all they are, words, words, words…

"Go!" This word reaches me. I nearly hesitate, suddenly full of the need to tell her about Lenmerer. I do not and at once Kat is lifted again. She helps us over the crater's edge and we are running once more into hell.

The shells fall everywhere. No longer do we dive into every shell hole, it is pointless. The splinters tear at my arms, my face, my legs but nothing drives home. Kat's weight becomes nothing to me, I could carry him forever.

And then, without ceremony, we are through it. I land in the deepest trench we still have and fall to my knees. My body collapses beneath Kat's sudden weight and my own exhaustion. I tip to the side and am conscious enough to let Kat down gently. I must not aggravate his wound more than I have already.

I lay still while a medic comes. He stands over me, his expression one of confusion. Behind him I see sprays of dirt and rock as shells continue to fall. He says something but I do not understand. They are too horrific.

"You could have saved yourself the trouble," he says, kneeling down to check my wounds.

"Trouble?" I ask. My head throbs. With each beat of my heart, a shell lands inside my head.

"He's dead," the medic says.

I rip free of him and turn to Kat. He lies in the mud where I let him go. His eyes are closed. "Fainted!" I shout. "Simply fainted. I was just talking to him. He took a wound to the spine."

"I know a dead man when I see one kid," the medic says but I'm free of him and am at Kat's side. I shake his shoulder, call his name but there is no response. He has fainted, that is all. This is the lie I tell myself when I lean down to listen for his heart.

The world goes silent. The bombardment ends. The wind dies. There is no intake of breath from anyone and I hear no heartbeat. The whole world bows before the passing of Stevron Katzin. A splinter has blown open the back of his head. I find the wound when I reach to feel for a pulse and my fingers come back covered in blood.

Overhead, engines whine. I look up and see ships with Republic symbols. They have come, at last, but too late. I look down into Kat's face one last time. I smooth his hair from his eyes and then reach down to close them.

"Sleep," I say. "Goodnight, Kat."

We are being evacuated. The Republic dropships that land behind our massacred lines are empty. They do not carry reinforcements but empty seats. I follow others as we are herded through the decimated trenches, past our swollen dead, to where soldiers in clean, powerful armor stand next to waiting shuttle ramps.

I shuffle with my head down. My body aches from half a hundred wounds brought on by scrapes, cuts, burns and worse ones that are not external but internal. I am shattered, enfeebled, and aged. Men whisper of rescue but rescue implies we are going somewhere away from here. Part of me knows I will never leave, even if my feet never again touch Balmorran soil.

A soldier in white armor stops me, glances at my rank patch and at my face. I do not meet his eyes, nor could I if I wished to. He wears a helmet that looks so very much like a sun-bleached skull. The dark eyeslits stare blankly, inhumanly.

"Are you Adkin?" the modulated voice asks. I nod.

"Stars," the man says. "Just a kid."

I walk up the ramp. Words whirl around me. I catch them in snippets but in the end, the story is clear. A treaty has been signed. Coruscant will be returned to the Republic in exchange for outlying and a few key systems.

Balmorra is to be given to the Empire.

I stare beyond the door. In mute witness I watch men shuffle onto the shuttles. We are being given a window to evacuate our front lines, an act of mercy I hear. I do not see mercy, or an evacuation. I see the hope of childhood fade away as gray lines of graying men disappear behind steel doors. I feel hope leave me.

I stand up and am very quiet. Beyond the doors, down in the trenches, I see them still. Vanmere turns toward me with his child-like grin. Lenmerer looks off into the sun, blushing. Shiod sneaks a bite and laughs about something I'll never understand. Kat follows, hefting his rifle. He herds them on, careful to point out where not to step. He looks back at me one last time and nods.

Take care of them Kat, because I can not. I am now so alone and so without hope that the future no longer holds anything over me. I will face it without fear and without hesitation. The war's toll is complete.

It can take nothing more.

The End


End file.
